I have great respect for the framers of the constitution. They were endowed with wisdom, prudence, foresight; not, however, wings.
They gave birth, as it were, to a nation; this was not an immaculate conception but a political process; i.e. it involved wrangling and negotiation. No one was struck dumb or hiked up to a mountaintop. (Unlike the classic immaculate conception, moreover, there were no women involved. Nope, not even when looked at through a lens of political correctness and revisionist history.)
I’ve been taught that they were good men and I believe it. But, although some occasionally have gold radii painted around their heads in respectful murals, they weren’t saints. Some owned slaves, fought duels, engaged in shady land deals.
Some, such as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (though I’m not sure he fully counts as a founding father under Christian dictates), were extremely mechanically inventive; even so, the technology of the day was, well, the technology of the day: George Washington was bled to death by his attending physicians in the course of their healing ministrations.
They knew of muskets, flintlocks, long barreled pistols; it is unlikely that they envisioned firearms that could shoot repeatedly for long periods at very great distances in crowds.
Our culture, of late, seems to love the idea of holy writ, especially when it can be used to justify a “no” to anything other than unlimited guns. We all know about the movements to teach Creationism and to undercut that messy evolution stuff. (Although, frankly, the Bible’s got some hodge-podgy sections.) Creationist zeal also seems, at time, to apply to the Constitution. It’s as if the document is our country’s very own manifestation of divine Intelligent Design. (God didn’t just make the sea turtle, but also the Second Amendment.)
Many (such as Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina) use this argument to oppose the traditional Anglo-American judicial practice of judicial precedent (so evolutionary) in favor of strict constructionism. (DeMint characterizes the use of judicial precedent as a game of “telephone.”)
I admit that attorneys use precedent with great creativity. But this is part of what keeps our law useful, applicable to changing circumstances; and precedent is, of course, rooted in the constitutional text, and in constitutional practices.
Of course, I’m glad that government officials protect, defend and preserve the constitution; and I want them to keep doing it. But, as a woman, I’m also glad that it hasn’t always been viewed as divine writ, unchangeable. That malleability has allowed me the vote; and also (thank God!) has allowed one of me (figuratively) to sit up there in front of the Senate and be voted upon. (Good luck, Elena.)
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