Subject:
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Re: "Centuries old piece of paper" still pretty darn good
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 12 Oct 2001 18:31:15 GMT
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Viewed:
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129 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In: http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=13712
>
> Scott Arthur derides the US constitution with these words:
>
> > It means that we have a legal framework which reflects the way
> > we live today. We are not held ransom by a bunch of politically
> > appointed lawyers arguing over semantics based on a centuries
> > old piece of paper.
>
> Well that "centuries old piece of paper" (parchment, actually) has kept us
> free, despite his scorn for it.
Yeh, I can't get with that scorn. It's not like the British
legal system is some paragon of virtue and morality--tort law
alone does not the entire US justice system make!
> Freer than he is, in fact, although he'll never admit it.
>
> He prefers to be ruled by fiats and regulations often developed and imposed,
> without specific debate, by ministers who serve a government elected by a
> bare majority (or less if it is a coalition) and protected by empty
> assurances of rights rather than by principles that take a lot MORE than a
> bare majority to overturn, because they are Constitutional Amendments.
<ramble>
There *is* a culture-specific reason why the Constitution has
such power. Recall the heritage of the early settler peoples;
part of the value ascribed to the Constitution is that it's a
fundamental document that shares amazing affinities with religious
documents. Clearly, the largely-Deist Framers understood their
audience better than most intellectuals in the USA do today;
they knew they'd have to sell their program to a constituency
that was *far* more religious and doctrinaire on the whole than
themselves.
Like the Torah, or the NT, or the Quran, the Constitution is
just nebulous enough to remain vibrant, yet still a basis on
which everyone can agree; commentators make their careers trying
to interpret its meaning, and coming from an academic viewpoint,
the parallels in particular between Islamic commentaries on the
Quran and commentaries on the Constitution are really, really
stark. It's a sign of our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and our
search for inscribed "fundamentals" somewhere. I can't say if
the Convention understood it this way, but the *conceptual*
position of the Constitution is as brilliant as its content.
However, being a product of that heritage, albeit a humanist,
I think it's just plain spiffy; in a sense, we can look at the
Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation as
part of an Old Covenant; the Constitution could be the New;
and ancillary documents like the Federalist Papers would be
the Epistles and, perhaps, the Apocrypha. And, of course,
look at the furor that arises over occasional efforts to add
to that national gospel! If you look at it in this light, the
wackier moments of the French Revolution make a *lot* more
sense.
Just a few thoughts here; I'm sure there are many more parallels.
But I'm not sure one can say that other states--at least among
the Anglo-American sphere--are unfree simply because they don't
have our document. The cultural context is more different than
any of us are ready to admit, even as we struggle to avoid
admitting all of the ways that we're culturally in close step. :D
Freedom isn't a quantifiable thing, not even as simply as zero-sum.
Like everything else, that concept has a cultural position too.
</ramble>
best (and relativistically, alas)
LFB
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