Of Constitutions and Conservatives

What are we supposed to be conserving, anyway?

A guest post from Alice Shattuck, of the Burn Barrel podcast and the new 1570 Project podcast:

I had the pleasure this week of speaking with Kaitlin of the RINO Podcast about something put out by the progressive magazine the Democracy Journal: an aspirational fantasy constitution concocted by a symposium of left-wing legal scholars, a proposed “New Constitution” to replace that perpetually irritating one created way back in 1787 by our benighted founders, which is always getting in the way of the progressive policy agenda.

The U.S. Constitution, the oldest continually operating national constitution in the world, can be frustrating at times. Its language can sometimes be unclear, or the intent of its authors murky. The limits on presidential powers have stymied many a chief executive and the quirks of the Electoral College perplex the rest of the world once every four years. Plus, it is dishearteningly difficult to change, if, you know, you’re into changing things.

The “if I ruled the world” thought experiment of the Democracy Constitution is a fun one, but as Kaitlin pointed out, the obsession with “democracy” alone as the guiding principle for a nation is ultimately empty and dangerous. The demos of a country is no less prone to authoritarian tendencies than any king. The “will of the people” is not always just and wise.

As Tom is fond of telling us, he is now an expert in the French Revolution, exhibit A in the excesses of raw, uncut democratic rule.

But the Democracy Constitution goes so far as to state that “All humans are social and political beings who can flourish only under conditions of advanced democracy,” a truly broad brush to paint with when you consider how few humans have historically lived under such conditions.

I suppose “flourish” is the debateable term here, but there is an incredible shortsightedness in the claim that no one has ever flourished in human history until the last few centuries, and even then, only a select few.

They think they’re the only people who have ever really lived. But that, it seems, is actually the point.

The American left would prefer to throw out the dark and unenlightened past, full of old white men and annoying roadblocks like the Second Amendment, and start over fresh. A new beginning with free healthcare for all, and a Council of Indigenous Nations as a third house of Congress, and reproductive freedom written right into the Constitution.

They want what they want, and they want it now.

But this is a political philosophy of children. We may have more and better stuff, bigger houses and cars and airplanes and skyscrapers, but we of the 21st century are not wiser and better than everyone who ever came before us.

The median age of a constitution in effect in the world today is currently 19 years, less than two decades. The U.S. Constitution, yes, is flawed, and it was, yes, written by flawed people who had not even discovered the concept of birthing people, but it has been undergirding the freest, most stable and most prosperous society on planet earth for more than two centuries.

And that is worth conserving.

The point of political systems is not to test out pet theories or perform intellectual experiments, but to allow people to - what’s that word again? - “flourish.” People flourish in stable societies, even ones that aren’t perfect, societies where they know the rules and don’t have to spend a lot of energy worrying about revolutions and wars and political violence.

And by that measure, the Constitution, old as it is, is succeeding.