Many now agree that America’s system of government is broken, yet when it comes to ascribing blame, nobody points to the real culprit: America’s excessive reverence for its Constitution. Our obsession with abiding by the archaic terms of this document has paralysed the political system. “Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago” – so much so, that the very idea of disregarding this “sacred” text sounds “radical”. Yet, in practice, US presidents and Supreme Court justices have often done so. The abolition of slavery, the New Deal, the outlawing of state-sponsored racial segregation: none of these, strictly speaking, were permissable under the terms of the Constitution. Yet they were enacted, and in each case, far from unleashing totalitarianism, the constitutional override helped the US grow and prosper. America must now extricate itself from its “constitutional bondage” and stop treating a “poetic piece of parchment” as the sole, inviolable guarantor of its citizens’ liberty. If people in countries like Britain and New Zealand can do without written constitutions – relying instead on accepted modes of behaviour and robust debate – then we can too. (Louis Seidman, New York Times).
I think Epicurus would be genuinely puzzled at the set-in-stone reverence for the American constitution (so would the Founders!). Constitutions should be designed for the benefit of people now, not be part and parcel of some sort of religion. The social, economic and political conditions of the country are light years away from 1789. Use common sense!
A petty example of how silly reverence for the text of the Constitution can be: the president has to be sworn in on January 20th, according to the Constitution. But this year the 20th falls on a Sunday. So the President has to be sworn in privately on Sunday, then publicly on the next day. It doesn’t really matter, but a pragmatic solution would be to avoid duplication of effort and do it on the Monday. It’s just a matter of mindset.
One of your fellow bloggers (link below) is thinking along the same lines. I’m reminded again and again about what prescient history profs I had in college. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s I learned that the reason there’s gridlock embroidered into the U.S. Constitution (via so-called “checks and balances”) is not only because many of its authors distrusted democracy but also because they believed that if the three branches couldn’t agree on policies, then nothing should be done. In 1776 not “doing” things didn’t produce the havoc that rains on us all in the 21st Century.
“America’s Founding Fathers were afraid of real democracy. With their abhorrence of majority rule and a true parliamentary democracy, they put into place a political system that is long on contending political forces blocking each other — and short on delivering meaningful outcomes.”
“Incredibly for a nation that considers itself synonymous with modernity and that puts such a premium on always being contemporary, most Americans consider the U.S. Constitution near sacred. That is why the system of checks and balances the Founders set up in the late 18th century still reigns supreme to this day.”
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?storyid=9878