Cross-posted at my website - sfruzzetti.weebly.com
The 112th Congress began with a symbolic reading aloud of the entire Constitution on the House floor, a sort of assertion by the new Republican majority that they would be adhering to the constitutional conventions they claim Barack Obama has violated (though their specific grievances are almost always totally unfounded – such as birtherism or opposition to Health Care – though they do not seem to take grievance with legitimate constitutional violations carried out by both the Obama and Bush Administrations, such as torture, extraordinary renditions, elimination of habeus corpus, warrantless wiretapping, and so on). The reason this reading was almost entirely symbolic was it willingly ignored now shameful parts of the Constitution, such as slavery, by skipping those portions of the document. Also, despite Republican obsession with cutting spending and the deficit and so on, this publicity stunt cost taxpayers $1.1 million.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) put this reading into the best context in an interview with the Washington Post: he called the “ritualistic” reading “total nonsense” and “propaganda.” He went on to say "You read the Torah, you read the Bible, you build a worship service around it, ...You are not supposed to worship your constitution. You are supposed to govern your government by it."
Indeed. While Nadler may be correct in a legal and logical sense, he is also correct for calling attention to the growing trend that exists particularly on the right (though plenty of Democrats act similarly in step) that treats the Constitution with a holy aura.
This loose understanding of the Constitution (finding constitutional actions by an opponent unconstitutional, finding unconstitutional actions by both parties unoffensive) coupled with this reverence is an obvious problem; for a die-hard and easily impressionable Republican voter, they begin to view Democrats as literal, evil political enemies, rather than simply fellow citizens with different views on how to properly manage governance.
This treatment of the Constitution is far too similar to the right's general treatment of another famous document: the Bible.
Take, for example, almost the entirety of Leviticus as a perfect example of twisted logic and hypocrisy. Leviticus is basically a guide or rulebook for how to live one's life – specifically pertaining to the Jewish people who had just finished their Exodus from Egypt and were spending 40 years in the desert. Taken this way, some of the more outlandish things could be dismissed as of their time and even almost necessary for surviving alone in the desert with no food or technology. But, for many modern day Christians (and some Jews), Leviticus is taken as literally as any other part of the Bible. This is the source of, for example, most anti-gay rhetoric that emerges on the religious right. Take Leviticus 20:13 (I'll use the King James version): "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." This is pretty overtly anti-gay no matter how you slice it; for someone taking the Bible as a literal truth, homosexuality should be punished by death (though thankfully most bigots don't take it that far). However, also in Leviticus are plenty of things that are completely ignored and seem downright ridiculous to the modern reader. Take Leviticus 21:17-18 - “People who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, cannot go to an alter of God.” Thus, being disabled is itself a natural sin. Or take Leviticus 3:17 - “The eating of fat is prohibited forever.” Gee, by that standard most of America is going to hell; actually, almost everyone except some vegans would go to hell (though there may be other parts of the Bible that forbid veganism for all I know). We can go outside Leviticus to find equally ridiculous and ignored passages. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 states “Stubborn children’s were to be stoned, and the stoning was to be instigated by their parents.” Talk about tough love! Or Deuteronomy 22:28-29 “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.” Wow, saying that if you rape a virgin you have to marry her and pay the girl's father instead of receiving a dowry, and you can never get divorced to boot? Is there any other concept that rapists and women's rights advocates alike could so thoroughly disagree with?
My point is this: the Bible is interpreted selectively. This is preferable to a literal interpretation by far, and indeed modern science has disproven most of the miracles as scientific impossibilities. This does not mean there are not valuable moral lessons in the Bible or that it does not bring peace and happiness to many people, it just means that the goodness of the Bible is entirely dependent on having a fluid, evolving understanding of spiritual values that are not pinned to an absolutist interpretation of literature thousands of years old.
Ditto the Constitution. The American Revolution was part of a wave of the birth of liberal democracy worldwide (the other most significant being the French Revolution) that was brought on by the basically technological factors of industrialization and primitive globalization. The American Constitution rejected a completely states' rights centric approach that had been enshrined in the Articles of Confederation because it made logistical functioning as a nation practically impossible and extremely empowered elites, who picked petty fights with elites from other states (not to say that the Constitution as is doesn't also inherently empower elites greatly - it certainly does, though this has been improved somewhat by amendments over the years). The Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, was at the time of its writing the most progressive interpretation of governmental law in history, designed specifically to evolve as the nation did.
This is why strict “originalist” interpretations of the Constitution are so absurd. Aside from the obvious fact that an originalist interpretation would have to enshrine slavery and subjugate women, there is the obvious fact that a document written in the 18th Century will not be perfect for governance in the 21st Century, period. Technological progress is exponential; could the Founding Fathers have envisioned the Internet's role in a democratic society?
If we were serious about adherence to Constitutional principles, there are a few amendments that could be passed that should receive bipartisan support in bringing about structure for a functioning, modern democracy. Off the top of my head: term limits, a digital bill of rights protecting Internet freedom, and digitizing certain functions of government for practical and cost-effective reasons (ie, the entire tax code could theoretically be done in an automated fashion, eliminating the possibility of tax evasion, among other applications). There are other amendments that I think would garner a vast majority of public support but have no chance of gaining any support from elites, such as an amendment repealing corporate personhood enshrined by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling or altering the nature of our representative bodies to be parliamentary in structure (just like nearly every other democracy in the world, including the ones we install by force; the problem of course is that a parliamentary system would eliminate an absolute two-party dominance, which is something bipartisan agreement can be reached to prevent).
The bottom line is that the system itself is broken and outdated, and we need fundamental structural reforms if we want to fix American democracy. This isn't to say we need a total overthrow of the government, we simply need more changes than elite politicians will ever give willingly. Just like interpretation of religion has and must continue to evolve, so must our interpretation of democracy.
These changes, if ever attempted, would be violently opposed by the right wing. They treat the Constitution basically the same way they treat the Bible: as a source for absolutely rigid interpretation when it benefits their worldview, and ignored when it seems otherwise. Hence the attempts to roll back basically everything that isn't specifically outlined in the Constitution, whether it's child labor laws or women's rights, or even if it IS an issue that was settled by a past amendment, like the ability of states to nullify federal laws (but only the progressive ones) or birthright citizenship. These people are, in a word, extremists, but extremists without any grounding in a tangible reality. They want reforms not that make our democracy better and more functional, they want reforms that advance their own interests by willingly subjugating others.
This underscores a larger psychological aspect about most of the public support of the right: a rejection of reason and reality. By wedding themselves to a supernatural worldview that places themselves above non-believers, they are empowered to think and do whatever they want because by virtue of their own supposed holiness they can do no wrong, and thus by extension neither can their leaders. Any evidence to the contrary is treated as an aberration, not as something commonplace, no matter how manysex scandals may suggest otherwise. The "religious right" are either emotionally or intellectually incapable of coming to terms with the modern state of the world that continuously and empirically proves them wrong. They have rejected discourse based on reason in its entirety, undercutting what is perhaps the most fundamental driving force behind how a liberal democracy functions: namely, the ability to use a sort of scientific method to see what policies improve society best. Hence, this worldview, despite its verbal love of democracy and freedom, is diametrically opposed to these concepts. Sane voices within the umbrella of the Republican Party that are intellectually consistent are increasingly rare, and I would posit that being a “small government conservative” and wanting laws based on a specific interpretation of Christianity are mutually exclusive positions.
Hyper-biased abusive uses of power that rely on shaky morals and hypocrisy are nothing new, but it's getting worse, and it only serves the interests of these moderately insane people and the corporate plutocracy that decides most policy without a real public debate. We need to start calling it what it is every single instance it appears: fascism.
Mike Godwin is most well known for inventing the term “Godwin's Law,” meant to refer to the idea that any debate or discussion that grows in intensity is likely to culminate in a reference to Hitler and/or Nazis. Part of the point of Godwin's Law is that drawing excessive parallels to this crucial historical event can dilute its meaning and prevent an honest consideration of the lessons and historical legacy of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their allies. Godwin's Law has subsequently been used to describe almost every public invocation of fascism and Nazis, often accurately, such as calling policy designed to get more people health insurance a fascist takeover from the mouths of Glenn Beck etc.
This has all made us miss a painfully obvious truth that is staring us in the face: lessons of the build up of Nazi Germany are being hugely forgotten and distorted, and its follies are being repeated. This is no longer an exaggeration. In my view, it happened something like this: with an economy exhausted after a prolonged war and exasperated by multi-national financial elites ignoring the plights of the masses for short term profits, the population of 1920s Germany grew bitter and sought to solve its problems through aggression, scapegoating a religious minority and seeking to assert global strength to prevent foreign powers from having excessive influence over its society, eventually leading to the dictatorial collusion of a powerful government with corporate elites to create a well-functioning machine of repression. Mussolini didn't call it fascism; El Duce called it corporatism. And if you don't see the parallels to today or think this is an exaggeration, you aren't paying enough attention.
What the fuck do we do about all this? Simply put: the people that aren't engaged and/or don't care need to start caring, and Ron Paul conservatives need to assert themselves as a forcefully different ideology with distinctly different goals than the brainwashed masses of the right and the elites that lead them by the nose for profit, just as true progressives need to assert themselves against the corporatist selling out of the Democratic Party that has affected most of Washington. Truthfully, libertarians and progressives have more in common with each other than with the leaders of either party; until they stop fighting each other and work together, I think the crazy people and the elite that are so good at controlling them will keep winning.
Why do I think this? Both groups of people are concerned with civil liberties, rights, democracy, and freedom of expression as over-arching important values. Both groups, though loath to admit it at first, see government very similarly, albeit from slightly different angles. Generally speaking, libertarians think government can serve no good purpose other than policing and safety. By contrast, progressives generally think that the only good purpose of the government is empowering the people, basically by serving as a counter to inherent inefficiencies in wealth that are unavoidably created by capitalism. Put another way, libertarians see the organizing function of physical security as the only legitimate organizing principle of governance, while progressives see the regulatory function on economic security as the only legitimate organizing principle of governance. Each of these positions has internal contradictions: libertarians assume that other than physical security, people will rationally act in an egalitarian way to create relatively equal societies (they won't, particularly the more power they have, and power will be amassed absent a regulatory function to stop it); progressives assume that if everyone were in economic harmony there would be no need for violence by anyone (closer perhaps, but still demonstrably false, if for no other reason than witnessing motiveless violence and understanding that violence is, in some ways, an evolutionary instinct that must be overcome, not vice versa). The fact is, there will always be belligerent, self-interested actors in any political calculation that will exploit the system one way or another. This is why balance of these factors has been key for liberal democracy, yet the absurd strength of economic actors to literally buy out physical force has completely skewed things to the point that neither philosophy alone can solve these problems. There should be major parties representing the interests of both progressives and libertarians in a rational way, rather than two parties dedicated to remarkably similar agendas with the only visible difference being the insanity of the voters of one party. The strength of the corporatist national security state is simply too great to be overcome by bickering over the value of specific programs; what we need is an entirely new approach to how we govern from all sides that will come through reasoned debate with all who are not currently a part of the elite.
There is an optimistic side to this as well as a pessimistic one. The bad news you should already discern by what I have said so far: stubborn people ground in their ways will be unwilling to change regardless of how much definitive evidence there is that they should. The powers that be will not surrender power willingly; it must be taken by force, whether a traditional revolution (ill-advised, since it would mostly be violently and swiftly crushed) or a peaceful yet forceful one in the model of Egypt. The powerful are simply too powerful to want to change a system that highly benefits themselves for the a loss of their own benefits. New technologies have literally created a Orwellian-lite society with routine surveillance of the masses and an at best arbitrary appreciation for the rule of law when prosecuting political enemies. To change the system, everyone outside of the elite and willing pawns of theirs will have to be united on specific points of structural change.
Here is the optimism: New technologies have also created a greater potential for democracy than ever. Digital communities can tackle issues, including those of political organizing, more effectively than any previous technology would have allowed. With a proper application of the technology we have and a concentrated effort to develop technologies that will further erode the necessity of the system as is, it is quite conceivable to understand that there is immense democratizing potential. The old functions of government and business of providing resources and stability fall away if you have a 3D Printer that can produce any amount of food anywhere on the planet (not there yet, but will be eventually); once basic needs of society are covered in a post-capitalist way brought about through immense technological change, as we are gradually drifting towards, the only reason to cling to old models of governance will be our own ability to not realize that we have evolved beyond them. And then we would be no better than the religio-fascists that impede us from making society better within the structures we already have.