The Constitution is a Piece of Paper

Pundits, both Conservative and Liberal, have of late proclaimed the fragility of Democracy. Democrats, while reflecting on the mob attack of the Capital, have especially warned of Democracy’s near demise in the US. None of that is precisely true. Democracy is far more a verb than it is a noun. It is claimed we are a Constitutional Representative Democracy. We do not carry out Democracy like a PTA, Elks Lodge, or sorority house.

The operative term and true noun of how we do Democracy is Constitutional. Most people view our Constitution, sometimes reverently, as the “rule book” for how we do Democracy and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. However, it is not a rule book like the rules for playing Backgammon, which probably can stretch back unchanged for thousands of years. 

The Constitution is intended to be fluid, correctable and only asks that a clear majority of Americans agree on the changes. In the body of the Constitution the Founders stated that they: 

…expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. 

It was a radical idea in its day, for the rules from governments, whether King or Tyrant, were always intractable rules until they weren’t, replaced by the next set of intractable rules. 

In the new United States all laws became by default tentative and challengeable. The cohesiveness of citizens that evolved from the understanding that nothing was etched in stone as long as a clear majority of the governed was in agreement turned the US Constitution, the Country, and its people into a powerhouse of potential. The stone prevailed and the world looked on in envy. 

The key has been the cohesiveness and, to a good extent, diversity among social classes, economic classes, and intellectual secularism (if secularism might be defined as the absence of religion in the creation of law) in every state of the Union. Without it, all bets are off.

To put it bluntly, if a significant portion of the American people concluded that there was no Constitution (or anything else) that binds them with every other citizen in the Country then our Constitutions could create no flame of Democracy greater than the match to burn the paper it was written on. 

There have only been two significant periods in American History where there has been no success or even effort to modify and improve the Constitution of the United States. One was the 61 years prior to the end of the American Civil War. In recalling Lincoln’s and other’s reflections on the times, they understood that our Constitution was in peril for a lack of adherence. His speech proclaiming a house divided against itself cannot stand has stood the test of time as rhetorical prophecy. 

The other major period of American History where there has been an inability to modify our Constitution to deal with present circumstances is the 54 years preceding the inauguration of Joe Biden. That’s 54 years and counting (note: I have not included the ratification of the 27^th Amendment which was a minor act passed in 1789 that got a final perfunctory ratification in 1998). 

When the Trump mob stormed the Capital building, encouraged to radical behavior by Trump and a substantial number of Republican Congress men and women, they fashioned themselves as “patriots” defending the Constitution. They and their Republican mentors appear to have had no ability to understand that they were doing the exact opposite. They were demonstrating that the US Constitution has no validity for a motivated minority. It would be of lesser consequence, given the single event by a relative few, however polls taken immediately after the event showed a 70-80% majority of Republicans approved of the effort made by the mob. 

This is the stuff constitutions can’t survive. 

Mitt Romney (R-Utah) rather eloquently pointed out on the floor of the Senate that the only way to overcome irrationality is on a foundation of truth.  Trump and Senators like Cruz and Hawley traffic in seeking the type of power where the rule of law is not based on a majority adherence to a constitution, but rather on the temporary emotions of those they have succeeded in turning fearful. They, along with Mitch McConnell and others have stoked Christian Nationalists to hate our form of Democracy, all the while lighting their cigars in the back room with copies of the Constitution.

Watching them beat a Capital Hill Policeman with an American Flag on a pole while Trump called them “special” was perhaps the best metaphor to emerge from the riot.