How do you like your constitution? Living or dead?
Conservative Jonah Goldberg
says he’d rather have it dead.
What, you say?
“Without a ‘living’ constitution, slavery and other such evils would still be constitutional!”
Come now. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Slavery and women’s suffrage were achieved with
the dead letter of the constitutional amendment. When we talk about the “living” constitution
we are talking about judge-made amendments to the meaning of the constitution.
The sad truth is that liberals will only discover the virtues of a dead constitution on the day
that their
ox is gored by the living constitution.
For twenty years, liberals loved the independent counsel law enacted in the aftermath of
Watergate. It was the most tremendous fun to put Republican officials on the rack. But when
Republicans started using the law to investigate President Clinton and his administration, then
liberals suddenly discovered that they didn’t like the idea of an independent counsel at all.
What would be a good issue to start on, to teach liberals about the danger of a living constitution?
“Experience keeps a dear school,” Benjamin Franklin said, “but a fool will learn in no other.”
No comments:
Post a Comment