"Let's Give Up on the Constitution"

As 2012 fades and 2013 - with its fiscal cliff, new taxes and further divisiveness - dawns, the sorry state of the country is captured in the headline of this post - a headline which appeared in yesterday's Sunday edition of the New York Times. That is, the US should abandon its Constitution.

Writing on the Times' OpEd page, Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and author of the forthcoming book “On Constitutional Disobedience,” sees the real problem facing America as being the US Constitution itself.   “No one blames the culprit:" he writes, "our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.”

This is not a joke.  The piece was presented to Times readers not on April Fools Day; it was printed on the crest of a new year - a year in which the federal government will reach even deeper into our pockets, our homes and our lives.  It is the absurd conclusion of the progressive saw that "old, dead, rich white men" are the cause of all of America's ills.   Seidman continues:

Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action.

Going further, Professor Seidman appears to think that the divisiveness engulfing the country today is the fault of the Constitution:

What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit. 

Addiction?  As though adherence to law and principles are a drug.  The internal logic is distorted and frightening   

Seidman's analysis of what ails this county, and its publication in the nation's best known journal, should be coldly sobering to all Americans.  The US Constitution is neither a Democratic nor a Republican document.  It, along with the Declaration of Independence, define this nation and people, our aspiration and our laws.  If we are facing challenges, if we are divided, perhaps it is because we have failed to pay enough attention to the Constitution.  

How did this nation, born from a passion for Liberty, law, responsibility and independence, descend to this?  And why did we allow that descent to occur and continue to occur precipitously over the past four years and the four to come?

Welcome to 2013.  Good help this country.