Saturday, September 17, is Constitution Day, a yearly “federal observance.” And posters in the local library announce: Constitution Week September 17~23. Across the country, many school children will be taught good things about the Constitution. But most won’t hear about its bad aspects.
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“Our original Constitution was
both brilliant and highly flawed.” So spoke Harvard law professor Alan
Jenkins in a Sept. 15,
2021, interview with Harvard Law Today. He continued,
It beautifully articulated the notion that government’s power flows from the people, and that government serves the people. But it was fundamentally flawed in preserving and propping up slavery, that ultimate form of inequality.
Jenkins also averred that the Constitution was faulty “for
excluding women, non-white people, indigenous people, non-property owners, from
the definition of ‘the people.’’’ But especially from “a racial justice standpoint
it was highly flawed.”
That was the basic self-contradiction of the original
Constitution, which to a significant degree was based on the ideas/philosophy
of John Locke, as I pointed out in my 8/30
blog post.
Most conservative Americans see and emphasize only the
“brilliant” facets of the Constitution. In 1955, the highly patriotic Daughters
of the American Revolution (DAR) petitioned Congress to set aside September
17~23 annually to be dedicated for the observance of Constitution Week.
That resolution was adopted by the US Congress and signed
into law in August 1956 by President Eisenhower. Then, Constitution Day was
established in 2004, and this year marks the 235th anniversary of
the ratification of the Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787.
In
a wide-ranging interview, Dr. Richard Land, a conservative Southern Baptist
who is now the executive editor of The Christian Post, urged American
Christians, regardless of their political persuasion, not to allow the Left to
define how they see the United States.
“According to Land, the Left-leaning American media invented
the hot-button phrase ‘Christian nationalism’ as a pejorative term that serves
to undermine the fundamental relationship between Christians and this nation as
defined in the U.S. Constitution.”
Yes, patriotic organizations such as the DAR and
conservative evangelicals such as Land tend to see only the good aspects of the
U.S. Constitution—and there certainly are such aspects that need to be seen and
appreciated. But that is only one side of the picture.
Most “Left-leaning” USAmericans also see the “highly
flawed” facets of the Constitution. That includes history professor and
highly popular blogger Heather Cox Richardson.
“Right-leaning” people doubtlessly see her as Left-leaning,
but she is a competent historian who deals with facts not ideological opinions.
In my 8/30 blog post, I criticized her for calling the position of Locke and
the drafters of the Constitution paradoxical rather than self-contradictory.
But to Richardson’s credit, she
also uses the word contradiction in writing about the drafting of the
first Constitution. For example, she begins the second chapter of her book How
the South Won the Civil War with this assertion:
At the time of the Constitution’s [drafting] in 1787 it was not yet obvious that a contradiction lay at the heart of the nation's founding principles.
Richardson also concurs with Jenkins’s recognition of the
“highly flawed” Constitution. She writes, “Without irony, Virginian James
Madison crafted the constitution to guarantee that wealthy slaveholders would
control the new government” (p. 21).
Although she does not mention maverick historian Howard
Zinn, he wrote pointedly about that contradiction in his best-known book, A
People’s History of the United States (1980). (Zinn, who died in 2010, was
born in August 1922, and last month his centennial birthday was notably
celebrated.)**
Zinn’s chapter on the Constitution is based partly on An
Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, an
influential and controversial 1913 book by the noted historian Charles Beard (1874~1948).
According to this
website, Beard interpreted the Constitution “as a conservative bulwark
against the encroaches of liberal democracy.” That is a “bad” aspect of the
original Constitution that is not widely recognized.
But unfortunately, that aspect of the 1787 Constitution may
be what the “originalists” on the SCOTUS want to restore now.
_____
See here for “Howard Zinn Centennial Week Events” and here for “Howard Zinn at 100: Remembering ‘the People’s Historian,’” an informative article posted by The Nation on August 24.
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Excellent piece, this morning, Leroy! Thanks. I tried for the umpteenth time to comment from my iPhone through my Google account, so I wouldn't be commenting as anonymous. Again, unsuccessfully. If any of your readers have accomplished that feat, I'd appreciate hearing from them how they were able to do it.
ReplyDeleteTesting
DeleteAnton, I hardly ever use an iPhone, but I went to the email I sent you Thinking Friends this morning, clicked on the link to the blogsite, and made the one word comment with my Google account as you see above. It was simple and easy, and I have no idea why the same thing doesn't work for you.
DeleteI appreciate your compliment on the blog post, but I very much would like to have heard your specific comments about the good and bad of the Constitution.
Local Thinking Friend David Nelson, who like Anton (above) is also a good personal friend, sent the following comments by email:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for reminding us of the reality that change is real. The founders of our national experience did their best at the time to capture a vision of government that would be faithful to a beautiful human community. They wrote and adopted a constitution. We now read and respond to that document with today's eyes and understanding. Like all sacred documents we need to understand that humans change. Like you, my friend, I trust our change brings greater dignity, inclusion, compassion. I seek to listen and read with more curiosity and less judgment."
Thanks for your comments, David. I think I only inferred that change is real, but I certainly think that the present Constitution, especially with Amendments 1~10, 13~15, and 19, is far superior to the original Constitution. And, I certainly hope that when school children are taught about the Constitution next week during Constitution Week they will be taught about the Constitution as it is now, not as it was when ratified in 1787.
DeleteBut I guess I am cynical enough to question the veracity of your second sentence. The "beautiful human community" recognized in the original Constitution did not include women, enslaved people, or indigenous people--or even the economically poor British-Americans. Thus, I agree with Jenkins (and Richardson, Zinn, and Beard) that the original Constitution was highly flawed. The changes through the years have, indeed, as you say, have thankfully brought greater dignity, inclusion, and compassion.
But there seem to be strong anti-democracy movements abroad in the land that are expressed, it seems to me, by the originalists on the Supreme Court. Thus, it seems to me that those who oppose a full democracy, as did many of the drafters of the original Constitution, need to be opposed (judged?) for the sake of women, Blacks, Native peoples, and laborers and not just listened to with curiosity.
I don’t have any problem going right to your blog from the email on my computers. However, after multiple tries, I have never been able to get in through my Google account on my phone to your blog, although I have no problem getting to it as an anonymous person. —Anton
ReplyDeleteStrange. Your Google account must have a different setting of some sort from what we have on our iPhone, which we seldom use for reading or writing emails as we are usually at home and use our computer with bigger screens.
DeleteAs often is the case, Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago has sent thoughtful comments:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for your comments about the U S Constitution, which clearly has some flaws. Of course, one must recognize that we are all products of our time and that certainly was true of the 'Founding Fathers' whose perspectives on human rights were different from those of the majority of us today.
"One could write extensively about the flaws in the constitution, but not in an email. I am appalled, however, by how the current conservative majority on the SCOTUS interprets it.
"I do not favor a constitutional convention to write a new constitution as there is a good chance we would end up with something worse.
One word about Charles Beard. I read one of his books when I was in high school, although I do not remember which one (it may have actually been one by Harry Elmer Barnes, the revisionist historian). In it, he (or Barnes) predicted the onset of WWII and also predicted that after the war, the U S would become a fascist state. At the time, I thought, 'Thank goodness that didn't happen.' I fear that I may have been premature in my judgment."
Eric, your comment reminds me of Sinclair Lewis' book on the possibility of fascism for the US, "It Can't Happen Here" (Collier, 1935). It's parody and satire as a novel, but chilling in that there could be a grifter like "Berzilius Windrip" and his armed militia who accomplished a coup d'etat and became dictator while serving no one but himself.
DeleteThanks for your comments, Eric. -- I agree with what you wrote in your third paragraph. All I have heard in support of convening a new constitutional convention has come from the far Right, so yes, we could certainly end up with something worse.
ReplyDeleteYou must have had a far better history teacher than I had in high school--or you have a much better memory. I don't remember hearing about Beard until I was reading Zinn's book a few months ago, and I would be surprised if my high school American history teacher had read Beard (or Barnes).
"A good point well made, Leroy. I guess I should not be puzzled that conservatives have trouble recognizing the bad, when they blatantly ignore and violate the good in the Constitution." (Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky)
ReplyDeleteI appreciate these brief comments from local Thinking Friend Dennis Boatright:
ReplyDelete"I have considered the Constitution to be an imperfect execution of the great ideals in the Declaration of Independence for the reasons you listed. The amendments address most of the failures, but it seems 'originalists' continue to search for loopholes to block rights to groups. And an imperfect society does not fully support rights for all, so we are still not ideal."
Thanks for your comments, Dennis. It was good to hear from you again.
DeleteI have always thought the Preamble of the Constitution was quite good:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
But now I wonder how many of the people living in the 13 colonies were included in "We," how many were included in the desire to insure "domestic Tranquility," how many were included in the efforts for "common defence [sic]," and how many were included in "ourselves and our Posterity." Certainly, we still have work to do in order to create "a more perfect Union."
https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-constitution
ReplyDeleteI’m no constitutional scholar. I think some insight might be available in comparisons between the US Constitution and the “unwritten” Constitution of the United Kingdom—the “ancient constitution”. Robert Blackburn, a constitutional scholar at King’s College, London, discusses the “conventional” features of British constitutional life that supplement and facilitate the cooperation of the many elements that comprise a de facto constitution in their system. Evidently, its limitations have prompted proposals that the UK write a formal constitution along the lines of those in other western democracies. Considering the frustrations Americans experience with their own written constitution, and the way it may be and has been wagged around politically since its inception, I suspect the Brits may be no better off by putting themselves into the thicket of disagreement, frustration and recrimination that would follow.
The UK does have a constitution, it is found “here and there”, and it is actually quite robust. The USA by comparison has a constitution that competing and contentious states allowed by insidious compromise in a federal system that is as much under attack today—it seems that way—as at any time. I wish people would read the thing including its amendments regularly, plus the Federalist Papers (we need ongoing discussion groups), and be more rational about Constitutional matters. The Founders certainly were, and that’s a mindset and a world lost to many folk today. But were they fully rational, in the sense that, say, a latter-day SCOTUS justice might be an originalist interested in a rational and objective constitutional interpretation?
If I understand certain analyses correctly, the problem of originalism is in the false notion that one may objectively interpret Constitutional statements based on word meanings alone. Words and phrases directly reveal original intent is the supposition. I agree with the notion, however, that the full context and circumstances of the framed words and phrases, the stated concepts, must be understood in order to have a truly objective interpretation. Originalists don’t see that.
In the matter, it is as if (or is it actually so?) that in the Constitutional Convention and the discussions of the amendments the Founders were deciding at best provisionally about certain issues (e.g., the right to bear arms for hunting or self-defense, or a questionable compromise on the political value of slave bodies versus white persons) in order to achieve a constitutional basis for a federal government of the United States. The stakes were enormous (think internal cooperation and international security against the stronger great powers, for example), and a confederation had proved unworkable—it was too “conservative”.
Only this about Beard and Zinn. I am reasonably sure the Founders were not suspicious of “liberal democracy” as the site you mentioned said, but of democracy itself. That may be a tie-in too handy, but I’ll stop there this morning.
Thanks for your helpful comments, Jerry. With regard to your last paragraph, I took Beard's comment to mean that there was certainly a form of democracy embedded in the original Constitution--after all, it refers to "We the people"--but the "We" didn't include everyone living in the newly established USA. I interpret "liberal democracy" in that context to mean an inclusive democracy that included women, enslaved people, indigenous people, and economically poor whites.
DeleteLate Saturday night, Heather Cox Richardson published her "letter" affirming many of the good things about the Constitution. Since I quoted her mention of the bad (contradictory) aspects of the Constitution, I want to join her in affirming that which is good in the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-17-2022