David Harsanyi is looking at the Death of the Constitution. A document widely ignored by both parties when it gets in the way of something “really important”. Like preventing gay marriage. Or prohibiting drugs.
Perhaps the flaw in the document is its ambiguity rather than its complexity. Giving Congress the wide-ranging authority to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to provide for the “general Welfare,” for instance, gives every do-gooder who can cobble together 50 percent-plus-one of the vote the authority to define the common good.
This includes conservatives, who would often have trouble passing their own originalist constitutional purity test.
Under what authority does government dictate the parameters of marriage, for instance? What in the Constitution allows Washington to prohibit the peaceful economic transaction between individuals — whether it be marijuana or anything else? (Alcohol prohibitionists had the decency to pass a new amendment.)
So, because the Constitution has become too complex for many of us to decipher, and thus irrelevant, its time to boil the whole thing down to its troglodytic and/or graceful basics and engage P.J. O’Rourke’s rules of governance in a free society:
1. “Mind your own business.”
2. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
Such attitudes were common at the founding of the country.
The early currency of the United States was printed with the slogan “Mind your business”!
The slogan, which is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, appeared on early US coins and paper currency.
Today we have liberal conservatives and liberal liberals. The common thread? Both see government as a force for good if only they were in charge. Neither sees government as a necessary evil.
Harsanyi in another column lays it out with respect to troubles on the Right.
…it’s social conservatism that will most often turn those with secular sensibilities away from the right. Even within the movement, a libertarian vs. social conservative debate has roiled on forever. This dynamic is only going to change when political expediency becomes a force more powerful than faith — which is to say the day after we pay off the national debt.
Now, it’s true that social conservatives can be unfairly ridiculed as bigots in these debates. But sometimes, as it happens, they act like bigots.
When, for instance, a bunch of influential organizations decide to boycott the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) yearly confab simply because a gay Republican group named GOProud happens to be participating, we have stumbled upon such a moment.
Eric at Classical Values makes fun of these “conservatives” who do deserve it. The only “rational” explanation I can come up with is that these “conservatives” think gayness may be catching.
David continues:
…let’s remember that last year leading GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee skipped CPAC, explaining that the event had become “increasingly libertarian and less Republican.”
Ah yes. The dreaded libertarians. Whose #1 sin is that they want government to leave them (and every one else) alone. I suppose the “conservative” answer is “What good is it being in government if you can’t mess with people? There are eternal souls at stake. That must be saved. By force if necessary.”
In the comments at Clayton Cramer’s blog I present the secular/Jewish perspective on the “conservative” desire to save souls by government force.
There is going to be friction. You see I do not need saving. You can’t imagine how offputting it is to hear that I do. I don’t need my sins to be forgiven. What I need to do is to get busy and right any wrongs I have committed.
So how do you square that circle? Mind your own business. Jesus managed to save souls (so some believe) without recourse to government force. Why can’t you? Or as some wag put it:
I suppose the persuasion is more effective if you have a “persuader” in your hand. Al Capone had a handle on that:
Which may be true. But is it religion? Or better: is it Christian? Well once upon a time it was Christian as the pogroms and expulsions the Jews of Europe suffered attest. Do we want to go there? Again? It is the kind of thing you get when you marry church and state. The past history of Christianity and the current history of Islam attest to that. Which is why Jews are especially twitchy about any move that seems to marry church and state even in the smallest particular. Such marriages have meant death or disabilities for Jews every time they came into being.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
4 responses to “Is It Religion?”
I’d say the Constitution is way too ambiguous, as Harsanyi ponders in that excerpt. I posted a comment elsewhere on this topic recently on another blog and I’ll tweak it for here:
Our Constitution is a completely inadequate defense of freedom. Simply put, our Constitution does even come close to serving the proper purpose of a Constitution in a free country.
It is primarily peoples’ desire to live, not the Constitution or laws of a country, that would keep people in a free society from harming each other–laws against murder and theft are needed but would rarely be called upon in an enlightened society, as there would be very little, if any, crime, lawsuits, and court usage. People would generally and almost entirely figure things out and work things out via rational, selfish cooperation.
My point is that the Constitution is not nearly as significant as it is made out to be–in my humble opinion. But I do think one is necessary and has value. That being said, ours needs drastic, enormous changes if it is to be of use, and not just a token that gets mouthed.
A Constitution is not a nation’s laws; it is the very starkly essentialized basic ideas that guide the laws; a reference point that needs to be radically updated every, I don’t know, 10, 30, 50, 100 years, in order to reflect important philosophic advancements that clarify the ideas in a big enough way that warrant an update. A society that does not have such big advancements will not remain free very long as it is likely not making enough intellectual progress.
Anyway, the one line from the Declaration of Independence of each person having the inalienable right to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness would serve on its own as an exponentially better Constitution than today’s. It puts forth a much more essentialized and accurate vision of what ideas the laws should be guided by.
Or, even better, Ayn Rand’s definition of capitalism form “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”: “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” [Pg. 10, “What Is Capitalism?”, essay in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, by Ayn Rand]. Combine that with her explanation of the mechanics of a proper government, from the same book: “The proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect men from criminals; the military forces, to protect men from foreign invaders; and the law courts, to protect men’s property and contracts from breach by force or fraud, and to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws” [Pg. 43, “America’s Most Persecuted Minority: Big Business”, essay in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, by Ayn Rand]. Those combined written statements of hers would serve as a good Constitution on their own because it would be a very clear, precise guide for what the laws should be.
Or even that entire essay “What is Capitalism?” could potentially be a good Constitution on its own if more depth is wanted.
If I hear One. More Person. complain about “government’s” involvement in marriage, I shall scream.
It’s really quite simple: among other things, marriage creates a partnership in property, resources, and/or money. In the event of death or divorce, the property must be assigned to various recipients. The civil code is critical, especially in the case of contested settlements; hence we have lawyers & judges sitting in court determining the proper equity (by way of the law) of a given case. If that isn’t a classic case of government, I don’t know what is.
The only way to divorce (excuse the pun) the law from the institution of marriage is to establish that said institution is a purely religious ritual akin to a bar mitzvah, or a Catholic confirmation. Neither of those two ceremonies have any legal weight on the individual’s status as an adult, any more than Christian baptism is a valid legal form of identification akin to a birth certificate.
But we still have to deal with the legal questions, so how? Civil union, of course! Alas, this just changes the name of the legal status of a given partnership; what was marriage is now civil union. The words have been changed, but not the necessity. The process I’ve just described is an appeal to magic, in the expectation that changing the words (or definition) would change the actuality. Either way, “government” has both a valid and compelling reason to become involved with unions/marriage.
I should note here that I do favor re-defining marriage as a purely religious ceremony, as that would seem to address the objections to social conservatives over the sacred nature of marriage. Not only that, redefining the ceremony as purely religious addresses social conservative concerns that any given church may be forced to perform rites objectionable to their ethos. It then becomes a 1st Amendment issue.
I would also be very interested to hear Mr. Harsanyi provide specific examples on how conservatives “often” fail in “passing their own originalist constitutional purity test.” I can think of only one specific instance of such a result.
For that matter, I have to wonder if he’s talking about social conservatives or political conservatives; certainly there’s a great difference between the two.
Casey,
Marriage is a State matter. The Federal Government has no authority in the matter. Or at least no primary authority.
And of course some of us are still trying to find the Drug Prohibition Amendment. Another State matter.
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So your points (and you make some good ones) are beside the point.
Federal, state, and local government controls are all essentially the same: they are government restrictions. It makes no difference whether my town, state, or country violates my natural rights–it’s a violation nonetheless. A local dictatorship is no better than a state dictatorship, and a state dictatorship is no better than a federal dictatorship. There are no “state” matters.