Saturday, May 12, 2007

response to alex and karl

My friends Karl Smith and Alex Kim are two very smart, thoughtful people, who share a blog called a A Civil Union that is dear to my heart:
http://acivilunion.blogspot.com/

They had a debate recently about the pope, abortion, and Catholic American legislators that is worth reading. It prompted me to think some thoughts in a slightly different direction...

I find myself compelled to ask a question of deep heresy (it is my duty as an anthropologist): in our society's hierarchy of authority-sources, the one authority-source that is never questioned, or at least is always nominally deferred to, even by Americans of a completely non-compartmentalized sort of faith, is the Constitution itself. Its seems to inspire a certain religious reverence in the American population that I find surprising. The Constitution is that against which we measure everything else for civil soundness, even when we can't agree on what it even says.

Why is this I wonder? How did this piece of paper acquire such mana? The contents are questioned and argued - but the authority it holds is revered as if it is sacred.

I suspect that the answer is much more than just its association with our founding myth (creation-story) and technologies of citizen-formation required of our imagined community. I think it has something to do with a cultural model of authority, rooted in submerged cosmologies of religious conviction and sensibility in the western traditions of empire. Our faith in the Constitution is downright monotheistic, but we don't know how to think about it otherwise. Alternatives are beyond the edges of reasonable thought.

I know this presupposes an ontological kinship between political being and religious being - but its a presupposition that stands, in my experience.

2 comments:

Alex said...

It's come to symbolize "Americanism," I think, insofar as there isn't anything else that would clearly do so, and it goes in that pantheon along with the Founders. The creation of our Constitution (unlike the formation of the French Republic, for instance) is our principal founding myth. It can also serve as our common reference point even when disagreeing over every single point at issue.

This is made much easier by the fact that it is so difficult to change and so vague. Were our Constitution, like everyone else's, a long, legalistic document in which many more specific things were codified, and which was changed every few years or so, it wouldn't have this status.

I tend not to be horribly insightful on philosophical points, but that is my best shot at it.

Sean Bakker Kellogg said...

In political science we refer to American's as constitutionalists. It represents an adherence to the rule of law beyond all other considerations. My experiences with third world countries (oops, sorry, emerging worlds...)--Nicaragua in particular--is that the constitution is a matter of convenience. It represents more of a justification of the government, rather than referential framework.

I believe America has adopted this stance for two reasons having to do with particular balances struck by our founding fathers and subsequent generators. The first is the balance between the states and the federal government. I know of no other country in the world which has taken the concept of federalism to the extent that we have, and the constitution is the codification of that balance. The states guard their power jealously while holding the keys to amendment (3/4s of legislatures must ratify any amendment). Unlike a unified government's constitution (i.e. the states themselves or most European parliamentary systems) which can be amended by just one legislative body, the Constitutional balance is one in which both sides of a bitter dispute must agree.

The second and perhaps more interesting balance is between the elites and the masses. The Constitution has protections aplenty for both... for example the unquestionable right of private property and the right to free speech for the elites, while the masses have the freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial of their peers. These balances make it so both sides have a vested interest in keeping the document exactly the way it is.

If we were to abandon the adherence, both sides could lose too much. Which is why the document has stood for so long. And even though I fear the recent conservative "strict constructionist" movement represents a threat to that stability (by removing the human face of constitutional interpretation), I take solace in know the Constitution has faced down such threats before and with belief and conviction of its people, will do so again.