The Garden of the Blind

I was visited by an old friend tonight. The two of us have been talking a lot recently about his newfound interest in the U.S. Constitution. He feels that the country has strayed too far from the document, allowing many unconstitutional things to be perpetrated (such as income tax, the No Child Left Behind law, abortion, and NAFTA). He feels that we should change to a stricter interpretation of the document.

In general, he is aiming for a Framers' Intent interpretation of the Constitution. If it isn’t there in black and white, and if the original writers hadn’t intended it, then it shouldn’t be. However, after talking about all this with him tonight, I realized something about Constitutional interpretation.

It doesn’t matter what the Constitution said, what the framers meant, or what the latest Supreme Court ruling says. What really matters is what I want the government to do, or not to do. Once I have that figured out, it is my job, as a citizen, to try to get the government to do that. If that means taking a test case through the courts, or getting an amendment to the Constitution approved, then that’s what I must try to do.

In the case of Constitutionalists, what is really happening is that they favor a very limited Federal government with a conservative legal base. Their way of fighting to bring this about is to argue that this is what should have been happening all along. Of course, they ignore the fact that the government has adapted (and grown) to meet the needs of the times. Whether this has been a good thing is certainly open for debate, but it has happened.

Ultimately, Constitutionalists, and any other political group, need to make a case for why their preferred style of government will benefit others. They need to take this to the people and try to sway public opinion as a whole. While they can argue that this is how it always should have been, they need to be able to provide more current reasons (such as that limiting government will result in the government being more responsive to the citizens’ needs, or that it will lead to reduced taxes).

I don’t think that they’ll be able to win many people over. Their position favors too small a portion of the electorate, and fails to satisfy the feelings of social guilt held by many of those who would benefit. I give them credit though for representing a position. The overall political arena is richer for having them.