Constitutionalism

The constitution of the United States, like that of all great nations, changes over time. The document from 1787 was a sensible organization of already existing features in colonial politics - a normative text and a descriptive text woven together in prudence. Since then, certain critical features have changed - this could be a long list - such as degree of loyalty felt towards the individual states, the quality and bent of general education, the position of the United States in international affairs - not least the constant waging of war, the extinction of free and fertile land for prospective settlement, the extension of bureaucracy which goes along with an aging legal system, and more. All these things are factors which go into making up the constitution of a nation.

The old document does not solve the problems presented by these new features; the injustices perpetrated by modern governments are, it seems to me, apart from instances of intentional evil, best understood as a failed attempt to solve the modern problems, which begins by struggling to find the answers to what is new within the answers to the old, and ends by throwing out the old altogether in a fit of frustration. The Constitution indeed has no specific answers to the modern problems, but rather asks us to solve them ourselves within certain proven boundaries. In this request, the Constitution argues at the same time for both its sufficiency and its insufficiency. If, then, we are to call for the restoration of strict constitutionalism, it must be on the grounds of prudence in relation to the current factors, not on the grounds of dogmatism about an old, problematic philosophy. Perhaps we might appeal to it on the grounds of inherited tradition. But I should guess that the founding fathers would think that to be an odd appeal.

It seems to me that my argument is these days understood to be true even if it is not acknowledged. How do you explain the contradiction between the ferment of complaint about the government and the jesting about violence, and, when you press any serious person, the reluctance about staking their lives on an attempt to restore a strict 1787 Constitution?

Post-Script: an unwarranted political prediction:

I am persuaded that, given the tremendous development of traditional powers over the 223 years of the existence of this constitutional system, an successful restoration of 1787 principles could only happen by revolt and revolution against the Federal government. Our current federal system is simply totally unlike what it once was. But a newly created state would die very quickly, because it would have cut itself off from its history and lost the old spiritual and theoretical energies, and would be absorbed back into a modified Federal government which by that time will have followed more openly imperial instincts.