Why Do Conservatives Treat the Constitution As if It Were Holy?
The Founders certainly didn't.
As patriotic conservatives, we take two premises as an article of faith:
That our Founding Fathers had the correct principles, and
That the system they bequeathed to us properly actuates those principles.
This then forms the kernel of an argument, the natural conclusion of which is that any political problems we have must be solely the result of corruption of that system by bad actors.
If the premises are true, then it makes sense to conclude further that all we need to do to fix things is to vote out the bad guys.
Let us set aside the question of whether or not it would ever be possible, within the system, to be fully rid of any such “bad guys.” ALL the evidence before our eyes ought to tell us that such a thing is not possible, but again, set that aside for now and ask a more basic question:
What if one of the premises above is simply not true?
I propose that the first premise is very much true. The Founders’ classical-liberal principles were the ideological and political actuation of the principles of natural law. Natural law is not only true, it is universally true. It is the same in every corner of this world, galaxy, and universe. Our great Founders knew as much. Whether or not they stated those principles with the maximum possible philosophical precision does not matter. Heuristically, they had it right.
By contrast, I propose that the second premise is false. I do not believe that system they bequeathed to us properly actuates those principles.
As I have offered in previous writings, ad nauseam, let me again make the following disclaimer…
The system they gave us was uniquely brilliant, and I do not believe that they could have, given their circumstances and historical context, done any better. Okay? This is not Founders-bashing day. I love them as much as you can love any people who died two centuries ago. I am grateful to live, and to have lived, in the country they gave us.
Yet I do not believe that the system that they gave us properly actuates the principles that they and I and most other conservatives and libertarians share.
Some—patriotic conservatives especially—react to such a statement as if it is literal heresy. An act of apostasy that is simply out of bounds. Why? Why is it not okay to say this? Why must we absolutely hold the Constitution as perfect…or at least as the best possible option humanity can ever devise?
The Founders themselves certainly did not consider it so.
Half the Founders—the Anti-Federalists—hated it. (Do you like having the Bill of Rights? I do. Arguably, it is the best part of the Constitution. We would not have the Bill of Rights if not for the Anti-Federalists.)
Some of those who ended up ratifying the Constitution did so reluctantly.
Opinion among newly independent Americans was by no means unanimous on the subject.
Even the pro-Constitution Federalists were compelled to write an extensive series of complex arguments in an effort to convince people, and when reading the Federalist Papers, it sometimes seems as if they were also trying to convince themselves.
In short, one side ended up winning a very political argument and the Constitution came into being.
Why have conservatives turned this contentious political compromise into a sacred text, beyond criticism? Is it just the conservative temperament—the urge to conserve anything that is old? Is it because we have come to believe that this is the best we can ever do?
It isn’t. There are many ways to critique the Constitution.
There is Lysander Spooner’s argument that either it has authorized the authoritarianism under which we now languish, or it was powerless to stop it. Spooner’s logic seems inescapably true. If either of those is true, then the Constitution has failed to do what the Founders wanted it to do. And at least one of those things is definitely true. Probably both.
There is also this much more basic critique:
The Founders clearly believed that no government was legitimate unless it had the “consent of the governed”… and they then proceeded to give us a government to which none of us consented! No American, other than the state delegates who actually ratified the Constitution, agreed to be governed in this way, nor has any person since.
We are offered the fact that we can vote for (and run to become) politicians as the solution to this puzzle. It is no such thing. You can vote until you are blue in the face and still have all sorts of things done to you to which you do not, and would not, agree. That is not consent by any reasonable definition of the word. People can keep repeating, over and over, that it is consent, but that does not make it true.
Most people have not heard of any alternatives, or thought of any themselves, and thus assume that this is the closest we can come to a consensual system. That also does not make it so. The Founders, given their moment in history, did not—and possibly could not—think of anything better. That too does not transform voting into consent.
The Founders has many principles, but the notion of consent is central to all of them. Violations of consent are violations of inalienable human self-ownership, and self-ownership is at the center not only of our rights, but of our very being. Without it, we are, as Ernst Cassirer noted, merely “lifeless things.”1
In other words, the Constitution fails to actuate the core precept of natural law. It fails to do what the Founders wanted it to do.
For these reasons (and others), the second premise from the argument above is false, which means the argument built upon them is not sound. Our problems are not solely because of bad actors.
Sure, things would be better if we were able to vote out the bad guys and get closer to the Founders’ original precepts. But if you have been paying attention for the last 200-plus years, you ought to realize that being permanently rid of the “bad guys” is simply not possible.
Indeed, it did not take long in our history for things to go wrong. By 1798, John Adams (who was one of the greatest patriots of the revolution) and the Federalists passed the Sedition Acts, criminalizing criticism of the Federal government. Slavery was supposed to end 20 years after ratification, and we all know how that turned out. The concept of good guys and bad guys is way more complicated than we think.
I want you to know that I understand why this line of argument inspires angry reactions from conservatives. The system the Founders gave us changed the world. It helped move the world away from the myth of hereditary authority. All of this is good and true.
The problem is that we have converted that truth into a secondary belief: that this system is the best that can ever be. It is thus entirely unsurprising that conservatives should seek to defend it tooth and nail.
That secondary belief is false. Our system did not property actuate the Founders’ principles, and it is not the best we can do. There can be other options.
Again, please note that even if you are skeptical of other options, or have never thought of any, that still does not change the calculus here. The system is not consensual. Full stop. The system is not properly protecting rights, and may even be structurally incapable of doing so. Even in the absence of alternatives you consider viable, those facts do not change.
I ask you to dial back the reflexive anger and really consider what I am saying. Not all Founders had the same view of the Constitution, and certainly none of them would have thought of it as holy writ, or wanted their descendants to treat it that way. Please consider the possibility that Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Monroe were closer to the mark than Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.
Maybe we’ve been backing the wrong Founders. Maybe they backed the wrong play.
And maybe we really can do better.
Here is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, on page 227 of Democracy, the God That Failed, quoting Cassirer: “‘Most influential writers on politics in the seventeenth century rejected the conclusions drawn by Hobbes. They charged the great logician with a contradiction in terms. If a man could give up his personality [i.e., his right to self-ownership] he would cease being a moral being. He would become a lifeless thing—and how could such a thing obligate itself—how could it make a promise or enter into a social contract? This fundamental right, the right to personality, includes in a sense all the others. To maintain and to develop his personality is a universal right. It is not subject to the freaks and fancies of single individuals and cannot, therefore, be transferred from one individual to another. The contract of rulership which is the legal basis of all civil powers has, therefore, its inherent limits. There is no pactum subjectionis, no act of submission by which man can give up the state of a free agent and enslave himself. For by such an act of renunciation he would give up that very character which constitutes his nature and essence: he would lse his humanity.’ (The Myth of the State, p.195)”
Idol worship from people who are spiritually empty from their fake entertainment churches is my opinion on it. Ditto that magic cloth they worship, the one that supposed free speech advocates go apopleptic when someone 'disrespects' it. Ditto when people lose their mind when other of their false idols take a knee during the national anthem. In other words, the state is their 'god' and is placed above all else, including God and family
I am at variance with the question. Conservatives very much distinguish between the Christian religion and the US Constitution and do not think any US foundational document is holy. Perhaps John Adams held that our government couldn't be operated by anything less than a religious and moral people because Christians do not place their trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.