The “Living Constitution”: Trojan Horse of Progressive Politics

If the meaning of the words change, why bother to debate them and write them down?

Or formulate them as "rhetoric?"

We Americans now live under a Chief Executive who believes, with every fiber of his being, that "rhetoric" always trumps "reality."

That is to say, if we think and speak of the world in a "new way," Nature itself will fall into compliance.

To me, such a statement indicates the ravings of a lunatic. But this would be the very person who is our duly-elected (twice!!!) "Lunatic-in-Chief."

I believe the Constitution is indeed a "living document." But I give all the credit for that to Article V, which details the rules for amending the Constitution.

The Framers understood they were designing a radically new political order. They also were skeptical that they could lay down rules once-for-all that would forever be applicable, when if history tells us anything, it is that "times change." So the Constitution is "living" in the same sense that any living organism is "living": It provides for the means of its self-maintenance over time by ensuring that it has measures in place that allow it to respond to socio-economic changes that occur that could not possibly have been anticipated in every detail by the Framers of the document. The Constitution is "living," because it is capable of self-renewal under any circumstances — because it stipulates the measures whereby it can legitimately be reformed, under due process, to meet unanticipated challenges.

But you and I both know, dear friend, that this is what the promulgators of "living constitution theory" expressly do not mean. They mean something else entirely, very much the reverse of the Framers' intention....

To your point about changing the meaning of words: To me the most egregious example of this nowadays is the legal redefinition of the word "marriage."

A student of human history and culture might remark that this word draws its primary inheritance from the idea of male–female bonding, which goes back something like 40 millennia in human history by now.

The entire idea of male–female bonding is the recognition that biological parents involving two sexes are necessary for the production of human offspring. And that, once born, said human off-spring need the incessant care and protection of both parents until said offspring are capable and competent to stand up as human adults on their own.

In the human past, this has most often implicated a division of labor between the sexes. In the earliest times, it wasn't just the children who needed protection by the aid of their male parent, but the mothers of children also needed such protection — to to leave the females free to attend to their children's well-being and upbringing, while the male fathers took responsibility for ensuring the basic physical protection, sustenance, and well-being of the family unit.

This is the traditional idea behind the word, "marriage."

But now, it seems that this understanding of the word has become "politically incorrect" — for it implies discrimination against people who cannot in principle have children but who wish nonetheless to assert their Fourteenth Amendment "civil right" to "marry."

You are so right to suggest, dear Blood of Tyrants, that changes in language prefigure changes in human communication and thus, basic human relations.

Thank you ever so much for your penetrating insight!

It is better, I believe, to think of the Constitution as an enduring document. It's time may be up.

But then, under your scenario, the Constitution no longer "endures."

You are right to suppose that it cannot stand without the enduring support of the citizens who made it possible in the first place — their initial reflection of the requirements of the public good conducing to free citizens, as carried out in and through their descendants.

I figure the Constitution is not "dead" so long as "fossils" like you and me continue to be alive. The challenge is to transmit what we know to the following generations, who are definitely not learning anything useful about American history and its Constitution in the public schools these days.

Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for your valuable insights!

“But then, under your scenario, the Constitution no longer “endures.”

I take the points you make in #45, but then I would observe that our Founding Fathers repeatedly made the point that our “Just” Government would not long endure if it was not renewed by each generation. Our efforts notwithstanding, there has not been much of that for near 100 years, the most notable coming in 1926 (even counting Reagan’s efforts in the ‘80s).

Even those of a later time understood that it is the Judeo-Christian Tradition that is the foundation and wellspring of our liberty:
“A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”
. . . . . Calvin Coolidge, “The Inspiration of the Declaration,” Speech at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926.

I am sure, therefore, that you will forgive me if I continue to regard the Constitution (and its fount, the Declaration of Independence) as “enduring” more than “living.”

Thanks for the BEEP!

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