Beatle fans may already be humming . . .
You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright
You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We don’t love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We’re doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright, al…
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright
As I write this the 2010 election marathon has taken another step forward, echoing yet another cultural touchstone, with “something old, something new . . .” I’m not sure which is which but it’s impossible not to notice at least two features of the current season of discontent:
- The reappearance of the perpetual dog whistle (currently most loudly blown by conservatives) of the need to amend the Constitution: Often around balanced budgets, recently about marriage, and now about birth rights.
- The palpable populist anger on the right in the form of the Tea Party (you decide if it’s coherent or not).
There are many lenses to put on the current political doings, mine is decision-making. One of the important thoughts in decision quality is giving yourself a good set of choices. Another is to separate out the consideration of choices from values (another word for preferences, criteria, or what you want). Only then can you make rational trade-offs. An important feature of modern political discourse is to do the opposite of both of those things: frame decisions as polemics with only two “choices,” one of which is a value masked as a choice, the other of which is framed as patently evil and therefore not a choice.
The US Constitution is a study in brevity and in the history of the Republic, there have been only 27 amendments, 17 depending on your point of view on the Bill of Rights (part of the original?).
The first 10 amendments fall broadly into the “oops” category (more accurately, they were the punt required to get the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution): The Bill of Rights was clearly and demonstrably meant to round out the Constitution, so “oops, we didn’t get this right the first time.” Depending on your point of view, there are other amendments that fall into that category. Here is the cheater’s guide to the first ten:
- Freedom of Religion, Press, and Expression
- Right to bear arms
- Quartering of soldiers
- No unreasonable search and seizure
- Rights relating to trials, punishment, takings, and compensation
- Right to a speedy trial and to confront your witnesses
- Trial by Jury in civil matters
- No excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishment
- Construction of Constitution doesn’t deprive you of rights retained by the people
- Powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States reserved for the States and the People
Personally I find the first two especially interesting. Why is it that Liberals fight for the broadest possible interpretation of the First and the narrowest possible of the Second (if not total disregard) and Conservatives do the opposite? One polarity thinks the establishment clause was an “oops” while the other parses commas and wants a militia mulligan. What’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander. Just wondering.
Amendments 11 and 12 have a similar “oops” clean up element, one dealing with election of a Vice President and the other with limits of jurisdiction.
The next three specifically relate to the Civil War. The 13th abolished slavery. The 14th is a doozy: The first paragraph deals with citizenship rights of people born here (and is the subject of much chest beating in the current poisonous political season). The rest is a serious smack down aimed at secessionists. The 15th states that race is no bar to voting.
Of the rest, two deal with booze (18 and 21), a total of nine, so more than half of the remaining 17, deal with voting rights (12, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26), one creates an income tax (16), one deals with Presidential succession (25), and one with Congressional pay (27).
Temperance and the abolition of temperance is the clear outrider. It came and went for two reasons: The federal government needed the tax revenue and sensible people realized that enshrining religious morality in the Constitution was a bad idea. The other 25 define and clarify the rights and obligations of the people and the people that act in our behalf.
People spend careers studying and litigating the Constitution and I’m not one of them. But I think I’m safe in saying the following . . .
- That’s not a lot of ammendments
- Getting an amendment across the finish line is a big, big deal. It doesn’t happen very often, BY DESIGN.
- The Constitution is fundamentally an exercise in making clear the rights of the people and the limits of the people acting on our behalf. Our rights are natural, not granted by a sovereign or by a non-terrestrial power, and everything flows from our consent.
- The Constitution is no place for imposing one group’s religious beliefs or morality on another. Lots of people have tried, they succeeded once, and their success was an abject failure. It is not a document meant to tell the people what we can or can’t do. It is a document designed to tell the government what it can and can’t do. That is a massive and important distinction.
- Any politician who campaigns on the idea of amending the Constitution is doing little more than pandering. It almost certainly won’t happen, and if it does, not in a time frame that matters. Remember the Equal Rights Amendment? It passed, right? No. After 70 years of trying it died. Talking about amending the Constitution is a smoke screen to avoid talking about something real.
In every Congressional session presumably well meaning people from both ends of the political spectrum propose buckets of changes to the Constitution. Some of these proposed changes show up every session like a bad penny. Here’s the current list if you care. Here’s a list by recent sessions of Congress. Some of them will scare you. Many fall into the category of saving the people from the manifest inability of our elected officials to act like adults. Others follow in the path of the temperance movement, looking to do through legislation what apparently can’t be done through moral suasion. Many others seek to undo the previous 27 leaving me to wonder if amending the Constitution is the act of a conservative or a radical followed by the inverse question, is undoing a previous amendment an act of a conservative or a radical?
In these times of discontent, lots of people are mad about the decisions made by others. The Tea Party populists think the current crop of legislators have made bad decisions when it comes to spending our money and telling us what to do. Cultural conservatives think the rest of us make bad decisions when it comes to the thoughts we think, the prayers we do or don’t say, who we have sex with (and how), and whom we want to marry. Gun controllers think the rest of us make bad decisions when we seek to exercise our Second Amendment Rights. Liberals are mad at the President for not being liberal enough. Many are now mad at the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment. It seems we’re all mad about something.
And the answer: Use the Constitution as a cudgel to force people to do (or not do) what laws, codes, promises, ethics, and church edicts obviously can’t do (why else revert to constitutional thermonuclear war?). It’s another sad example of magical thinking . . . if we can just fix this one thing, if we can just invoke a power higher than ourselves (in this case the Constitution), all our ills will be cured.
In general, I buy the thought that if we want people to make different decisions, we need to do one of two things: Change the question and/or change the values they use to make trade-offs. In this case, the values that the fixers want to tinker with aren’t the small kind. This is the founding document of the Republic. It belongs to the people. Not just to the people who are alive today, but to our ancestors dating back to the 1700s and the generations that will follow us. The good news is that the fixers won’t prevail any time soon or at all. In the mean time, may I ask as politely as possible that the fixers, whoever you are, put down the bong, step away from the ledge, and leave our Constitution alone. There are plenty of opportunities to mess around with laws and regulations to attempt to do what you want to do. If you can’t get it done that way, maybe that’s a sign.
