Living Constitution

[Judges must] understand that our Constitution is a living, breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.

How can you confine what the Leftist wants to do, what the Statist wants to do once you've abandoned the constitution. You have to rely on their judgment? They have no judgment. This is why they talk about a living and breathing Constitution. They want to get away from the limits on government, and you see it right now in spades.

The "Living and Breathing" Constitution?

Today, the mad Libs shout about the living and breathing Constitution. Now Originalists (who are usually Conservatives) are opposed to this idea, this idea which leaves open just about any interpretation of the Constitution so that it can be an enabler for any policy, any government action. Originalists say that the Constitution was intended to always be applied to all circumstances as it was originally written and intended--that the Constitution is NOT "living and breathing" but contains so much ageless and timeless wisdom that it can be applied to any circumstances. And there is also the provision for making Amendments to allow it to be given a significant new aspect if new circumstances do warrant that. For instance, when it became apparent that society was ready to allow women to vote, a Constitutional Amendment was ratified giving women suffrage. Amendments to our Constitution are not at all easy to get ratified--and that is by design. The Founders were absolutely opposed to radical, whimsical changes being made to what they considered the most important document in the land (which is why they never called it "living and breathing"--which is a brain-dead phrase if ever there were one). The way the Founders saw it, if society has really changed so much that a new Amendment is needed, the hard ratification process will not stop it from being passed into Federal law.

If the Constitution didn't mean what it was written to mean, then it meant nothing. Nothing great (or elsewise) that this country has ever done ever happened--because it was never authorized to happen. This is a brain-dead mad Lib argument if ever there was one--and it's the very same kind of "reasoning" and perversion of language that inspired George Orwell's 1984.

The assumption that if someone is dead for an indefinite period of time their words become meaningless except for what those of us living today decide they should mean for our own purposes is as brain-dead as it gets. This means that if we unearth ancient documents such as clay tablets, we can never hope to interpret them, because whatever those people wrote was never what they wrote (?!). How would you like to be a writer and write a great novel that you hope will make a lasting, profound impact on mankind in your lifetime and for generations to come--only to be told that your great work will be essentially meaningless in, say, no more than two generations? You don't have a hope of leaving anything to posterity--and neither do today's Liberals. And that's exactly what they want--because then they aren't responsible. They don't have to think about anything they do and they don't have to have a conscience about any harm they cause. It's all about them and their here and their now.

The "living and breathing Constitution" is the ultimate in mad Lib narcissism. The Native Americans used to have a saying that whenever you are going to cut down a tree, before you do it you should think about the consequences of that act down to the seventh generation to come beyond your present one--and make your choice of which tree to cut down based on that very careful reflection. That's the way the Founding Fathers were thinking when they wrote the Constitution. But the "living and breathing Constitution" concept means you think about today and tomorrow be damned and tomorrow's people, including your own children and grandchildren, can go to Hell. If you need the Constitution to mean something, you find the way to make it mean that. All you have to do is go through the political process and you can make the Constitution mean anything at all.

Originalists go out of their way to research the historical context in which the Constitution was written--so that they can understand the original intent and meaning, and make sure insofar as is humanly possible to make sure that only the original intents and meanings of the Constitution's words are what are understood today. To do this they turn to documents outside the Constitution written by the Founders such as the Federalist Papers (essays published in a New York newspaper arguing for why the then-new Constitution should be ratified and adopted). They turn to writings on natural law and natural rights from the era and eras that went before. Originalists respect and learn from history; Liberals cut it up in a rotospader to sow the seeds of confusion and, hence, dissent.

“If we’re picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a ‘new’ Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless." ~ Justice Antonin Scalia to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC (President Wilson came up with the "living and breathing Constitution" concept).

"[The argument the Liberals give is that the] Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says some things and doesn’t say other things." ~ Scalia, 2008

Related links:  Declaration of Independence   U.S Constitution   Bill of Rights
Federalist Papers  Articles of Confederation

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