On a more practical level, there is a legal principle known as “time immemorial,” or time out of mind. Aside from the Age of Enlghtenment—which some Founders, like Adams, despised—the Constitution draws on various principles from the Middle Ages and before. English law wasn’t so tied to Roman law as was continental law, but there was a massive influence. Why else all the Latin phrases?
The fact that the founders were educated still didn't cause them to create a system based on older systems. Root language aside, the roman sentate doesn't bear any actual resembelence to the US sentate. Are you honestly suggesting that the constitution was influenced by the "wisdom of the ancients" because of latin phrases?
The Constitution was the foundation of the U.S., not America. If nothing else, certain political units predating the U.S. persist under the Constitution, which should give you a clue it didn’t come ex nihilo. To answer the question, though, there’s a lot to conserve aside from the Constitution..
Most people accept that "America" and the "United States" are synonomous terms. Any political units the predate the constitution were creations of the same people that created the constitution, therefore they have the same basis. Generally speaking nothing springs from nothing, however some things are new and unique, like our constitution.
I’d rather live without a Constitution and with some remenant of traditional morality, for instance, than a Constitution and Anything Goes.
You can't be without our constitution and still have traditional morality. Without a constitution we would live in a tyranny. A tyranny is the good example of an "anything goes" society. It appears that the basis of your comment is a false dicotomy. Can you give an example of traditional morality (meaning that it was practiced in past by Americans)that must be conserved that is not protected by the constitution.
“The fact that the founders were educated still didn’t cause them to create a system based on older systems”
I won’t make a claim for cause and effect, but they certainly did base it on older systems. It is absolutely impossible to imagine the Constitution outside the context of English law, which itself evolved partly from the Roman model. Not so much as were continental systems, but to some degree.
Whatever was new, and obviously there were unpracticed ideas, yes, came out of the Enlightenment, or however you want to put it. But that, as well, you have to recognize as being inspired partly by English whiggishness. No very precise measurement is available for what was purely American, but it hardly matters for present purposes. Suffice to say they didn’t invent a whole new system out of nothing, and I wouldn’t, nor should anyone, want them to.
“Are you honestly suggesting that the constitution was influenced by the ‘wisdom of the ancients’ because of latin”
Absolutely. Or, rather, those phrases are concrete and widely recognized evidence of that influence. There is no way all those old words could travel circa 1,300 years just by happenstance, without their underlying meaning being useful and understood. Nevermind the words themselves, if they aren’t persuasive. Get it straight from the horses’ mouths, as it were. The Founders and Framers were explicit about their debt to the ancients, as they were to their religion, whiggishness, etc.
“Most people accept that ‘America’ and the ‘United States’ are synonomous terms.”
No they don’t. That’s why history books start with Jamestown or Plymouth Rock instead Philadelphia, 1787.
“Any political units the predate the constitution were creations of the same people that created the constitution”
Not exactly, but okay.
“therefore they have the same basis”
What’s your point?
“Generally speaking nothing springs from nothing, however some things are new and unique, like our constitution”
I don’t want to quibble over how much was old or new. It’s obvious to me—I might say violently obvious—that it comes from larger previous ideas. And I’m not talking about how there’s nothing new under the sun, or that the more things change the more they stay the same. I’m saying the ideas have been around for a long time, if shrouded by centuries of feudal detritus in Europe. The pioneer spirit, the Western frontier, American exceptionalism, and blah, blah, blah made it happen. But the law, moreso than other cultural institutions, grows over time. Lightning bolts of newness are not so sudden as they seem. I should have thought conservatives, of all people, would think so.
This wasn’t the original argument, by the way. At first I was trying to get across the point that conservatism is bigger than the Constitution. I brought up the Western tradition, “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” and Christianity not as things which subsume the Constitution, or merely as things that stand before it, but as things which stand apart. That is, other sources of inspiration, learning, and the spirit of preservation.
One of the arguments for conservatism’s being bigger than the Constitution, but only a very limited argument, is that the Constitution itself derives from previous ideas, like those suggested by my short list. I could just as easily argue that the Constitution is all well and good for politics, but conservatism isn’t a political ideology. It’s a worldview, as they say, and has significance for the whole of life.
So if you want to conserve within politics, by all means defend the Constitution. I tend to think it’s too late; not that I want it to be, but can you really imagine going back? Anyway, if that’s the only thing you can think of worth conserving, I don’t think you’re much of a conservative. An idolator, more like.
“You can’t be without our constitution and still have traditional morality.”
Yes you can. That’s what we have now.
“Without a constitution we would live in a tyranny.”
Perhaps, but tyranny doesn’t mean no moral order. I’m not going to say it’s conducive to moral life, but it doesn’t preclude it. The moral order is bigger than that.
You’re looking things backwards. Without a certain moral order, and various preexisting cultural institutions based on that order, there couldn’t be a Constitution. Ivory tower intellectuals could write one speculatively, but it’d never have force. Moreover, the Constitution needs a moral order to persist. The Founders were explicit on this count, and I agree. Laws are empty without qualified men to administer them and educated men to follow them.
It may not require angels, and no men are angels. But it does require knowledge of what constitutes freedom and duty. It does require general moral order to understand correct political order. It does require “eternal vigilence,” which can only be worthwhile when you know what to be vigilent about.
The law itself does not protect us from tyranny. It cannot, for men will not follow the law just because it exists. I offer as evidence their not having followed the Constitution, which now persists as a animatronic skeleton. it has no soul left, because men failed it, for various reasons. They failed it because they didn’t maintain the ideas, the moral ideas, behind it.
“A tyranny is the good example of an ‘anything goes’ society.”
Like I said, I’m not going to say it’s conducive to moral order. Tyrannies aren’t necessarily degenerate. The important thing, though, is that, again, you’re twisted up. Even if tyranny leads to Anything Goes—for the government, at least—the Constitution doesn’t lead to morality. Constitutions can lead directly to tyranny, by being defenseless. Morality led to the Constitution, and only morality can preserve it. It cannot preserve itself.
“Can you give an example of traditional morality (meaning that it was practiced in past by Americans)that must be conserved that is not protected by the constitution.”
Is this a serious question? I couldn’t possibly. The Constitution protects various things worth protecting, directly or indirectly, mostly by suggestion. But it barely brushes by in a canoe the coast of an island of the continent of traditional morality. You can talk about the first amendment protecting free expression, art, religion, the critical attitude, thought itself, etc. But that’s loose talk. No one would know what to do with the floor of freedom to speak, which within Western culture (as butressed by traditional morality) can rise to the heavens, or stay put right there on the cold concrete. Nothing in the Constitution says what happens next, after people can express themselves.
I can sum up what I’’m trying to get across, perhaps, by pointing out that, as our president says, the Constitution is a document of “negative liberties.” It briefly lays out the state’s responsiblities to its citizens, but mostly it says what the state can and can’t do. It doesn’t say what its citizens can or should do once the system is in place. That is basically up to us. You can infer from what the Bill of Rights chooses to protect what’s important to us. Religion, speech, guns, etc. Though this is misleading, since those things were chosen partly because they are especially important to resisting government.