House of Eratosthenes

Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post, offers a voice to a widespread complaint. The reasonable observer cannot help but entertain the notion Mr. Milbank is also offering a semblance of substance to a complaint, that in reality has none.

What the Republican majority decided to read [in the House of Representatives] was a sanitized Constitution – an excerpted version of the founding document conjuring a fanciful land that never counted a black person as three-fifths of a white person, never denied women the right to vote, never allowed slavery and never banned liquor.

The idea of reading the Constitution aloud was generated by the Tea Party as a way to re-affirm lawmakers’ fealty to the framers, but in practice it did the opposite. In deciding to omit objectionable passages that were later altered by amendment, the new majority jettisoned “originalist” and “constructionist” beliefs and created – dare it be said? – a “living Constitution” pruned of the founders’ missteps. Nobody’s proud of the three-fifths compromise, but how can we learn from our founding if we aren’t honest about it?

Right, Dana. Any time I want to figure out how I can learn something, I make a bee line straight for people like yourself who so clearly haven’t learned even the basic essentials about that very thing.

Scripsit Ghettoputer makes a diligent effort (hat tip to Prof. Mondo) to figure out what’s going on here:

1. BEST CASE: Mr. Milbank views everything through a liberal’s twisted viewfinder, in which everything is reducible to group identity and victimhood. Here, the Republicans’ purpose in reading the Constitution was to remind themselves (and the Democrats) that there are limits to legislative authority. Mr. Milbank feebly attempts to cram down his own preferred purpose on the Republicans’ Constitution reading: a history lesson showing why White European American men are evil and bad, and must be blamed and/or punished for any unfortunate occurrence befalling any Democrat recognized victim class at any time, in any place. If this is the case, Mr. Milbank’s odd take can be ascribed to his liberal myopia.

2. WORST CASE: Mr. Milbank is being purposefully obtuse in order to tar Republicans as out-of-touch racists, beholden to Tea Baggers (ZOMG!!1!) in order to further liberal aims and agendas. ‘Puter’s got some experience in the law, and in all but a few instances, one may blithely ignore repealed laws (or portions thereof) because they are, you know, no longer operative. Claiming that Republicans must read inoperative portions of the supreme law of the land is as stupid as insisting that astronomers recognize that the Sun revolves around the Earth, because that’s what the general consensus was hundreds of years ago. Mr. Milbank is not a stupid man, so ‘Puter is left with the sole remaining possibility: bad faith. But why?

Mr. Milbank and liberals want to discredit the Constitution. To them, the Constitution and its limited government concept stands in the way of letting smart people (largely, them) dictate how stupid people (largely, us) live, because the smart people know best. Mr. Milbank and his fellow travelers know well that much of the liberal agenda is, at a minimum, in tension with Constitutional mandates, if not outright unconstitutional. See, e.g., the individual mandate. Republicans reminding America that there is a limit to government cannot be tolerated, as it challenges liberals’ ability to impose their agenda on a benighted citizenry.

My own opinion? I don’t think it’s even this complicated. The persons whose sentiments are echoed by Mr. Milbank, or at least who say their sentiments are aptly represented by this argument, obviously see the reading of the Constitution as nothing more than an opportunity to ‘fess up to, and wallow around in, our nation’s historical sins. Or to cravenly pretend that those historical sins never were there.

Now, if that is the most important thing about what such a ritual means to you, how do you go about ‘fessing up to that without also ‘fessing up that you have not been abiding by the document’s confinements?

As I said a couple days ago, now that the dirty deed has been done this has turned out to be a shrewd political gambit. Yes, there were some legally current sections of the Constitution that were “abridged” or “redacted” when some pages within the binder stuck together. Seems to have been executed with all of the reliability and integrity of President Obama’s swearing-in.

But it has been logically proven to everyone paying attention — and this is the biggie: We are having an argument, in our nation’s capitol, about whether the Constitution matters.

How did Chief Justice ~~William~~ John Marshall put it:

[I]f a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions. [emphasis mine]

If we have a written Constitution, it must be binding and supreme to the lesser laws or else it is as entirely extraneous as the left-wingers like Milbank seem to think it is. But how many Supreme Court decisions that the hard left happens to appreciate, in fact idolize and worship, would have to go the other way if the Constitution is nothing more than a historical wart. Any state in the union could criminalize abortion willy-nilly — that, clearly, is not what they have in mind — so that cannot be it. The Constitution is therefore legally relevant, legally superior.

If it is legally relevant and legally superior, then when it applies to a case along with an ordinary written law that provides a different consequence, the Constitution must triumph, so that the lesser law becomes a nullity.

With such a pecking order in place, our nation becomes a nation of laws and not of men. The interpretation of law becomes a necessary chore, one which must be carried out with logical coherency, in the three branches of government as well as in the fourth one in which Mr. Milbank toils away.

And he, along with all his sympathizers, has just confessed to “controvert[ing] the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law”; he and his sympathizers “are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.”

Apparently, this schism whose description flowed so eloquently from Chief Justice Marshall’s pen some two centuries years ago rages away today with little deviation or evolution, even on a micro level, from its past form. If that be the case, then I cannot imagine a more productive exercise for our Congress than to read the legally applicable parts of the founding document during the opening of the session. In fact, there’s something of an urgency to it if it generates this much controversy. The Constitution must apply, or else we’re currently engaged in some kind of lost-in-the-jungle, make-it-up-as-we-go-along silliness.

Congress has the steering wheel and people like Dana Milbank want to make a contentious issue out of whether it should observe where the guardrails are.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Edited to correct the Christian name of the great Chief Justice. It was a mistake to wax lyrically after watching The Lion In Winter without consulting my Google.

The Constitution is great when it lets them do what they want. When it doesn’t, it’s some outdated garbage written 100 years ago (in the words of noted legal expert and all-around super-genius Ezra Klein. Gosh, and somehow Sarah Palin’s the dumb one).

See, this is why I argue that the whole concept of “cognitive dissonance” is 99% hooey. If it were anything like as painful as it’s supposed to be, liberals’ heads would be constantly exploding from the pressure.

Man, has this whole “read the Constitution” thing been a blast or what? I’ve always thought that the best refutation of liberal “arguments” is to hold them to specifics. Yeah, ummm, Dana? That 3/5ths clause you keep going on about? You do know that was strictly for apportioning representation, right? And you do know that it was nullified by the 14th amendment, right? And speaking of, you do know that, to that point, nothing in the Constitution denied women the right to vote, don’t you?

I love it love it love it. Get ’em all on record. Which specific parts of that hundred-year-old, meaningless scrap of waste paper do you object to? Which parts do you want to keep? What, specifically, is wrong with the amendment process — and before you answer, please do remember the 19th amendment.

Republicans should do this with every piece of crap legislation that came down the pike in the last two years. Obamacare? Read that f*cker, section by section, on the floor of the House and ask our brilliant friends on the left to parse it for us. Tell them: “yes yes, we’re all horrible, horrible racists. Sexist, too. And homophobic. And just low-down dirty skunks in general. You can put that in the Congressional Record. But now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, can you tell us specifically what’s in this bill? What’s so great about this particular section as opposed to that one?” etc. etc.

Liberalism has been nothing but a big temper tantrum since at least 1964. Let’s show everybody that.
- Severian | 01/08/2011 @ 08:32
The comments over at RWN written by left-wing posters are just priceless. Here’s my response to one of them, one appropriately named “Soldout:”

“I’m having trouble understanding what exactly it is you’re objecting to. You’re arguing in favor of a “legal framework,” which is precisely what the Constitution is. All other laws are “hung” on that framework. It clearly indicates what the federal and state governments may or may not do, as well as spelling out specific responsibilities for the three co-equal branches of government. You want a nation of laws rather one governed by the arbitrary rules of whomever happens to be in power at the moment, right?

It’s not “playing politics.” It’s reminding “the chamber” what the rules are. I’m sick of hearing the Left sneer at this as if it were nothing but a cheap publicity stunt. I mean, this outrage from the same people who want to pass bills without even reading them…and then have the temerity to claim the GOP wants to rule without a “legal framework” in place? Are you kidding me? But then, I’m just a typical conservative, so what the hell do I know?

“Sellout” is exactly what you are. Sold out to the Left’s shrill advocacy and its attempt to govern our country by fiat.”
- cylarz | 01/09/2011 @ 00:09
They’ve really come out of this thing as the big losers on the public relations front. They’ve been beaten at their own game.

They’re probably doing a post-mortem behind absolutely soundproof closed doors. “Yeah, we should’ve said ‘Reading the Constitution is a great idea’ or something.” With the wisdom of hindsight, it’s easy to see they were doomed to lose this hand the minute they decided to oppose it, since they look like exactly what they are. They think rules are for everybody else.
- mkfreeberg | 01/09/2011 @ 00:50
In college I was your typical dumb, unreflective liberal. Of the two things that finally opened my eyes and made me a conservative, by far the most important was the sheer arrogance of the left. Looking back on it, I’m not surprised I was a liberal; being a know-it-all little snot myself, I hung out with other know-it-all little snots. But one day I just got so sick and tired of hearing pretentious people going off with absolute certainty on subjects I knew they knew nothing about.. and that was that.

This “read the Constitution” stunt is a lot like that. What, you’re so full of yourself that you can’t even bear to hear the words of the thing you swore an oath to defend? You can’t even stand it for an hour an a half, knowing that a lot of those poor NASCAR-watching, Franklin Mint-collecting rubes who in their one moment of coherence voted for you, actually kinda like the thing? You can’t even throw them that bone?

Jeez, the campaign ads really write themselves, don’t they?

[for the record, the other incident that made me a conservative is quite common, I suspect, among my fellow reich-wingers: I saw the size of the federal tax bite on my first paycheck]
- Severian | 01/09/2011 @ 08:53
Jeez, the campaign ads really write themselves, don’t they?

Indeed. As I wrote elsewhere, this is something of a turn-around for me. I thought, just as much as anybody else, that this was kind of a gimmick and might hurt more than help. The left has changed the outcome through their protests, to their own detriment.

What’s particularly devastating about this self-inflicted wound, is that the perception aligns so well with reality. It’s not like an incident of “the perception is that a stimulus package might help the economy” or “the perception is that Palin doesn’t know what she’s doing,” perceptions that will be contradicted by evidence later or will be left wanting for supporting evidence. This is a perception that is going to be fortified as we go forward: Leftists want to get their stuff done by any means possible, and if the Constitution gets in the way they’ll drill through it like they’ll drill through anything else.
- mkfreeberg | 01/09/2011 @ 09:15

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The Redacted, Sanitized ConstitutionSaturday, January 8th, 2011

The Redacted, Sanitized Constitution
Saturday, January 8th, 2011