CLARIFYING THE NATIONAL STORY AT THE SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Akhil Amar contemplates the Federal Constitution.  It's worth reading his essay in full, as he takes stock of how people viewed that document at various previous milestone birthdays for American Independence.

Without a national story, will the country last another 50 years in anything like its current form? It is not, alas, a preposterous question as our deeply polarized nation experiences an upsurge of political violence and vituperation.

A "national story," like anything else that involves human interaction, is an emergent phenomenon.

So it was with American Independence.  Mr Amar observes, thinking about 1826, the good and the bad.

America was generally peaceful, prosperous, free, and self-governing. It was a land of regular elections, broad political participation (including jury service), peaceful transfers of power, orderly courtrooms, unrivaled newspaper circulation, robust entrepreneurship, brisk technological innovation, burgeoning centers of learning, and considerable religious freedom. It had no large standing armies in peacetime. Free folk from around the globe were starting to stream into the United States. The Constitution was succeeding.

And yet, America still had miles to go before it could sleep the sleep of the blessed. A horrendous system of race-based and rape-infused chattel slavery had deeply entrenched itself in the lower South. No dominant national movement had yet arisen to eliminate slavery in every inch of America. Native tribal peoples had often suffered cruel dispossession and worse, and would continue to suffer with little relief in sight.

Resolving those tensions, and many of those that followed, involved amendments to the Federal Constitution, as well as changes in the way Serious Thinkers viewed its role.

It is in those amendments, and in the changes in thinking, that the National Story becomes more complicated.  It might not be, as Mr Amar concludes, that politicians as a class, citizens as a class, experts as a class, do not understand the national narrative.

Restoring American greatness begins by correctly understanding the true greatness of America’s past, by recognizing America’s true national narrative over the last 250 years—a constitutional narrative that makes sense of our roles, responsibilities, institutions, and ideals as Americans; an intergenerational narrative that connects us to our collective past, that binds us together with our fellow citizens in the momentous present, and that beckons us toward a better future. Such a narrative is more essential for Americans than for other people around the world because we have so little else in common. We embody many races, ethnicities, and national origins. We profess different religions and speak different native languages. We span a vast continent encompassing multiple time zones and climate zones, and a dizzying number of local pockets and patches—mountains and valleys, forests and deserts, beaches and prairies, great cities and vast hinterlands. What we have in common is our Constitution and the epic saga that underlies it.

That Constitutional narrative, though, whether it be understood as a strict framework or as something more malleable, living, if you will, follows from the principles laid out in our Declaration of Independence.  You know, the statement that rights inhere in the individual, and neither families nor holders of the proper credentials enjoy a permanent, divinely ordained right to order others about.

Recently Associate Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a lecture that has been hailed among traditionalist and populist commentators for casting doubt on the special right holders of the proper credentials have been using the Constitution to arrogate to themselves.  Before he got to that part of his presentation, he noted that the Federal Constitution, correctly understood, codifies those rights asserted in the Declaration.

Even as so much of our God-given and Constitutional rights were denied us, we still faithfully said the pledge of allegiance, memorized the preamble to our Constitution, and yearned for the fulfillment of its promised ideals.

Sadly, these sentiments are not as widely shared among our fellow citizens today. And, they certainly do not seem to have that sustaining strength that they had back then. In fact, all too often the sentiments tend toward cynicism, rejection, hostility, and animus toward our country and its ideals. With the foregoing in mind, I would like to begin by addressing my first encounter with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps not what you would immediately think.

The second paragraph of the Declaration proclaims: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”  Throughout my youth, these truths were articles of faith that were impervious to bigotry or discrimination. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “self-evident” as “obviously true, and requiring no proof, argument or explanation.”  Whether they had a divine source, or a worldly one, they were never questioned. They were the Holy Grail, the North Star, the rock – immovable and unquestioned.

Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that “in God’s eyes and under our Constitution we are equal.”  This was also the case with my nuns, most of whom were Irish immigrants. At home, at school, and at Church, we were taught that we are inherently equal; that equality came from God; and that it could not be diminished by man. We were made in the image and likeness of God. That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so.

Somehow, without formal education, the older people knew that these God-given or natural rights preceded and transcended governmental power or authority. When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that you did not get your rights or your dignity from those governments, but from God. Though not a literate man, my grandfather often spoke of our rights and obligations coming from God, not from the architects of segregation and discrimination.

That is the language of Abolition and Emancipation.  That is the language of Desegregation and Voting Rights.  Either rights inhere in the individual, irrespective of that individual's station in life, or the Declaration and Constitution are so many fine-sounding but empty words.

Even as so much of our God-given and Constitutional rights were denied us, we still faithfully said the pledge of allegiance, memorized the preamble to our Constitution, and yearned for the fulfillment of its promised ideals.

Sadly, these sentiments are not as widely shared among our fellow citizens today. And, they certainly do not seem to have that sustaining strength that they had back then. In fact, all too often the sentiments tend toward cynicism, rejection, hostility, and animus toward our country and its ideals. With the foregoing in mind, I would like to begin by addressing my first encounter with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps not what you would immediately think.

The second paragraph of the Declaration proclaims: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….” Throughout my youth, these truths were articles of faith that were impervious to bigotry or discrimination. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “self-evident” as “obviously true, and requiring no proof, argument or explanation.” Whether they had a divine source, or a worldly one, they were never questioned. They were the Holy Grail, the North Star, the rock – immovable and unquestioned.

Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that “in God’s eyes and under our Constitution we are equal.” This was also the case with my nuns, most of whom were Irish immigrants. At home, at school, and at Church, we were taught that we are inherently equal; that equality came from God; and that it could not be diminished by man. We were made in the image and likeness of God. That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so.

Somehow, without formal education, the older people knew that these God-given or natural rights preceded and transcended governmental power or authority. When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that you did not get your rights or your dignity from those governments, but from God. Though not a literate man, my grandfather often spoke of our rights and obligations coming from God, not from the architects of segregation and discrimination.

From there, the Justice builds his case that Technocratic Progressivism is a departure from the fundamental principle, enunciated in the Declaration, that rights adhere to individuals.

Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement—with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War—to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration. Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, the inalienable rights of the individual were “a lot of nonsense.” Wilson redefined “liberty” not as a natural right antecedent to the government, but as “the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests.” In other words, liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government. The government, as Wilson reconceived of it, would be “beneficent and indispensable.” Progressives such as John Dewey attacked the Framers for believing that “their ideas [were] immutable truth good at all times and places,” when instead they were “historically conditioned, and relevant only to their own time.” Now, Dewey and the progressives argued, those ideas were to be repealed.

Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the Government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.

By all means, he contends, celebrate the Declaration.  His remarks about the Administrative State have drawn the most attention particularly among traditionalists and populists, and Civitas Outlook recently posted links to several such commentaries.