For some, the first-ever reading of the Constitution on the
floor of the House of Representatives this week was merely symbolic, having no
meaningful significance to the country or to the legislative process. To
others, not only was the symbolism powerful, but it represented perhaps the
beginning of a return to fundamental principles in the governance of our
nation.
Based on reactions and even the debate prior to the reading,
the symbolism was both positive and negative. The positive, as mentioned, comes
from the perspective that there is some effort to return the country to its
constitutional roots, since it’s obvious from the legislation that has emanated
from Washington for many years that few of our federal legislators have ever
read, much less understood, the Constitution.
The negative symbolism was evidenced by a reluctance of some
to read the original version of the Constitution as ratified in 1787. To some,
the reference to slaves being “three-fifths of all other persons" was
politically incorrect, even though the phrase was later voided by the abolition
of slavery. This reluctance to peruse primary documents and commentary
contextually with the reality in which they were penned is a symptomatic
ailment of contemporary historical analysis that has led to massive historical
revisionism.
Most textbooks these days say little of the historical
verities that “formed us a nation,” but devote entire sections to politically
correct topics written from an “enlightened” 21st century
perspective. As such, historical revisionism is an illegitimate process of
“whitewashing” history, and a willful distortion of historical fact in such a
manner as to make certain events more or less favorably perceived. Such a
practice is antithetical to legitimate scholarship. As an example, we see the
process employed with regularity by contributors to the Journal who willfully
ignore the vast primary source material evidencing the Christian influence in
the founding of the nation, in favor of scant evidence to the contrary, in order
to secularize, or make politically correct, our history and portray any
Christian influence as nefarious.
The reading of the Constitution is significant also because
it is that document to which federal elected officials are required to declare
obeisance and fealty. They don’t take an oath to do the will of the people, to
enact good programs replete with good ideas, or to create new programs that may
be popularly viable. They take an oath to “protect and defend the
Constitution.” Consequently, it’s imperative that those officials know the
language thereof, and understand the limited enumerated powers stated therein,
and abide by those limitations, whether it comports with their personal
ideologies or not. The language is specific, and limiting, which was even
admitted to by then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama who, on a 2001 PBS
radio program, admitted the Constitution gets in the way of implementing his
ideology.
James Madison recognized this problem over two hundred years
ago, when he said, “If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done
by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a
limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to
particular exceptions.”
This has to be a bit disconcerting to those who think the
document is archaic and anachronistic rendering it insignificant. If our
elected officials take an oath that demands by their “sacred honor” that they
“support and defend the Constitution,” the document is not only relevant today,
but its content is to govern every decision they make in our behalf. Ezra Klein, a Washington Post
columnist, earlier this week in an MSNBC interview asserted that the
Constitution is “too hard to understand” because it was “written over a hundred
years ago.” You can’t get much more specious than that as a reason to disregard
our founding document!
To those like Klein, the Constitution is a “living” document
which, as Thomas Jefferson warned, has become “a mere thing of wax in the hands
of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”
They willfully ignore the fact that, as Jefferson declared, “To take a single
step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of congress
is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of
any definition. ... [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly
within the enumerated powers. ... In questions of power, then, let no more be
heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of
the Constitution."
While the reading of the Constitution this week on the floor
of the House may have been largely symbolic, those of us who love America and
what she stands for hope that it is much more than that. We pray that it
represents a return to constitutional principles of governance.