Dahlia Lithwick joins the lefty chorus jeering at House Republicans over their plan to read the U.S. Constitution at the start of the new session.
The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson, then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers."
I wonder if Ms. Lithwick thinks amending the constitution is unconstitutional. Progressives like to remind us that slavery was condoned in the constitution before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it. It's their way to discredit the document and anybody that thinks we should be governed according to it. Besides, in the progressive view the constitution was meant to be interpreted not amended, and congress, especially with a Republican majority, doesn't have the authority or the brains to interpret.
Even Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute—its popular pocket version of the Constitution is only $4.95!—agrees that these are largely symbolic measures, noting in the Wall Street Journal that as a legal matter, "at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do." Nobody has suggested that legislators don't have an independent duty to uphold the Constitution as they understand it. But that doesn't change the fact that the courts, not Tea Party Republicans—even those with the benefit of extra-credit classes from Justice Antonin Scalia—get to make the final call.
Recently progressives have come up with a new argument in support of constitutional interpretation by qualified judges: Nobody else knows for certain what it says. After all, it's more than 100 years old, and who could possibly understand what anybody back then might have been talking about when they concocted the thing? Ms. Lithwick expands:
The wonderful Garrett Epps writes today that if Tea Party Republicans really listen to the Constitution, they will quickly realize that "the document they are hearing is nationalistic, not state-oriented; concerned with giving Congress power, not taking it away; forward-looking, not nostalgic for the past; aimed [at] creating a new government that can solve new problems, not freezing in place an old one that must fold its hands while the nation declines." So long as there are fair-minded judges on the bench, the Constitution will be read for what it actually says, and not what any one results-oriented group or faction wants it to be.
When Ms. Lithwick specifically mentions "fair-minded judges" who should be the final arbiters, it's not hard to imagine the kind of judges she has in mind. But the more interesting point is her agreement that the constitution does not limit congressional power. Garret Epps is her authority on it. Though Epps is equally befuddled, he worries that "others may not read the Constitution precisely as I do." He says:
The intention to limit Congress is, to me at least, pretty hard to actually find in the Constitution itself.
Really? The words, "Congress shall make no law..." don't leap out at him? Hmmm. His must be a very liberal interpretation of the phrase. After all, it's his crowd that always said the Second Amendment, which establishes "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" really meant that the states have the right to establish their own militias. Fortunately, the Supreme court has since ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. I can't help but doubt that Ms. Lithwick thinks the Supremes are fair-minded judges.
In any event, Ms. Lithwick sees no point in reading the constitution on the floor of the House. Says she, "...it doesn't get less nuanced or complicated just because you've read it aloud." And the more liberal you are the more complicated it gets. To a progressive, it means whatever aligns it with the latest progressive fad, which means it could say different things on different days.
All the more reason to remind our representatives what's in it.
And so starting at 10:30 this morning this morning Republican members will take turns until the entire constitution has been read from the floor of the U.S House of Representatives.
"This historic and symbolic reading is long overdue and shows that the new majority in the House truly is dedicated to our Constitution and the principles for which it stands," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
"As the written expression of the consent the American people gave to their government -- a consent with restrictions and boundaries -- the public reading of the Constitution will set the tone for the 112th Congress."
Progressives may ponder what that means, "consent of the governed." Progressive don't agree that government needs consent, certainly not when it does what it deems right for the little people. Besides, the phrase "consent of the governed" comes from the Declaration of Independence. And wasn't that written even earier than the constitution? Who could possibly understand what that meant?
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