Saturday, November 26, 2022

QUORA: 'We live in a totally different world now. Shouldn't the Constitution be reinterpreted to match our reality?’

 QUORA: Constitutional literalists treat the opinions of the Founding Fathers as though they were God-inspired. We live in a totally different world now. Shouldn't the Constitution be reinterpreted to match our reality?


I posted this answer:


No, because nothing fundamental about “our reality” has changed. 


The Founding of America grew out of certain Enlightenment discoveries. To wit:


  • All individuals are beings of reason and free will, the attributes that distinguish humans from all other life forms. 


  • Individual human beings are autonomous beings, each possessing their own minds and capable of using the judgment of their own minds to guide the course of their own lives. 



  • To secure this freedom, every person needs the guarantee of certain inalienable rights, including rights to life, liberty, and the personal pursuit of happiness.


  • As per Nature’s mandate, individual human beings must work to support their lives, so the ability to produce, keep, use, and dispose of the product of one’s labor must be legally protected both from private criminals and despotic governments. Hence, the rights to his own earned property.


  • Freedom needs the rule of objective law to exist, so governments must be instituted to secure these individual rights, equally, at all times, for all.


  • Powerlust is still endemic to the human condition, so governments can still be breeding grounds of tyranny. Therefore, they must be structurally designed with enough checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from accumulating too much political power.


Yes, today’s world is materially far different from the world of 1787. But the worlds of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Dark and Middle Ages were “totally different” from 1787. Yet the Founders studied history, as well as their contemporary world, to draw lessons useful in framing the Constitution of the new nation. But they were not mere pragmatists. They also consulted the guidance of major philosophers of the Ages, in order to meld theory and practice into a workable, liberty-protecting government. Above all, they understood that human nature, the laws of nature, and man’s relationship to broader nature are immutable and unchanging. So they designed a Constitution to support the basic principles of a free human society, not just for their own contemporary world, but with an eye firmly cognizant of posterity. Drawing from history, philosophy, and contemporary experience, they designed a Constitution consistent with what they called “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and capable of being sustained through all of the changes of future ages. Just read the Federalist Papers, and you’ll see the broad scope of their thinking, and how they adapted the principles they discovered to the practical challenge of creating an effective government while protecting individual liberty. Essentially, the philosophy that guided their work is consolidated in these words: 


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .


This is not to say that the Constitution should never be amended or clarified through law or court interpretation. Yes, today’s world is materially much different, and so are many issues that concern us today. The Constitution can certainly be refined, and the Founders understood that. For example, the Electoral College was amended in 1804. It was further clarified by Congress in 1887. That Act is currently being reconsidered by Congress once again, and has a good chance of enactment. Yet, through these changes, the Electoral College continues to function well to facilitate transfers of presidential power while maintaining its function as a check on federal and majoritarian power. Note that these changes do not harm the basic Electoral College system, which is part of the cheeks-and-balances the Founders saw as vital to protecting balanced government and thus liberty. While the Electoral College outlived its means of implementation, it did not outlive its usefulness. 


The Founders weren’t “God-inspired,” despite what Religious Right revisionists claim. And I don’t know any Constitutional scholars who believe that. In the Federalist Papers, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton explain the workings of the Constitution, and the reasons for them. I read the Federalist Papers cover to cover, and I do not recall any mention of religion or God except in relation to religious freedom or the Laws of Nature. There were no phrases such as “God said” or “God mandates” or “God inspires us to ...,” or the like. The Founders explicitly rejected the union of religion and state in any form. The Founders were men of The Enlightenment, meaning men of reason and reality orientation. 


As the Founders understood, we should always seek “a more perfect union.” But the U.S. Constitution should not be reinterpreted in its fundamental philosophical orientation, because the Constitution already conforms to reality in its fundamentals. In their practical genius, the Founders created a changeable constitution oriented around unchanging natural principles. Today’s world is not “totally different.” Nothing fundamental has changed from 1787—not human nature; not the laws of nature; and not man’s relationship to broader nature. Yes, new lessons of experience and history can be drawn. But the laws of nature cannot be “reinterpreted.” They are immutable facts of reality. Thus, the principles of the Founding have not changed. These principles, from which come individual rights and limited government, are fundamental to America because they are fundamental to the free civilized society proper to human beings. 


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* [Individual rights define the scope and boundaries of human freedom; in effect, you have the right to freedom of action, so long as your actions don’t infringe on the same rights of others. See Tara Smith, Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Studies in Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy.)]


Related Reading:


Will the World's Statist Past, or the Founders' Values, be America's Destiny?


America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson


In Gay Marriage Decision, the Court Upheld the Founders' Vision


The Conscience of the Constitution—Timothy Sandefur


The Founders Were Flawed. The Nation Is Imperfect. The Constitution Is Still a 'Glorious Liberty Document.' -- Timothy Sandefur


In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed


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