The last bumper sticker: The Sacred Text

 Okay, we've finally come to the end of this tedious exercise. 

            The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history. 

Again, I'm not sure what the political point is supposed to be here. As far as I know the only people who want to repeal the Constitution are conservative Republicans, notably the followers of Donald J. Trump. But as a liberal of the non-neo variety, I do take issue with the statement.

For some reason Americans are inclined to see the Constitution as equivalent to holy scripture. It's the infallible word of God. Obviously, the Constitution we have today is not the one ratified in 1789. There are those little details like the abolition of slavery, direct election of senators, women voting. But, granted there have been some improvements, does the Constitution we have today really guarantee our freedoms beyond any other society or political arrangement in all of history?

The question is somewhat imponderable because the nature of freedom is imponderable. All freedoms (or liberties if you will) granted to one person may constrain those of another. If you are free to have a shooting range or a lead smelter or an outdoor heavy metal rock concert venue on the property next to mine, obviously I am harmed by it. But if my freedom is protected by, say, zoning regulations that don't let you do that, your freedom is constrained. Obviously there are a million more examples, many of them much more complicated and difficult to decide. The point is that there is no way to "guarantee freedoms" for everybody or even anybody, unless we assign all liberty and agency to a single person, which evidently some Republicans want to do, in which case at least we've guaranteed it for Kim Jon Un, but not, sadly, anyone else.

Liberty is not infinitely expandable. It's a zero sum game, that demands tradeoffs. The Constitution itself can provide only very broad parameters for those tradeoffs. It's only 4,543 words, including the signatures. The tradeoffs are actually made by the legislative process, the courts, and their actual implementation by police, prosecutors, and regulators. Whatever the Constitution actually means and the effect of its words is ultimately decided by the courts, which have disagreed radically over the years. And as we have seen all too often, people who are willing to ignore the Constitution and the law and try to seize power by force or fraud often succeed, as in the Jim Crow south, and as a certain person aspired to do recently, an aspiration that remains a major threat today.

 

There are some obvious specific flaws in the Constitution, notably the overrepresentation of small, rural states, the possibility of gerrymandering, the powerful role of wealth in electoral outcomes,* the ultimate unaccountability of the Supreme Court. You can make a very respectable argument that people in Scandinavia, Canada and many other countries enjoy more freedom than we do. But be that as it may, the only guarantee of freedom there can ever be is an informed committed, active, citizenry.

 

 

*The Golden Rule of Politics: He who has the gold, rules."