Donald Trump suggesting the Constitution should be tossed out if it doesn’t give him what he wants proves that conservatives don’t really revere the document and never did. Ditto with history, liberty, and everything else they claim to venerate. Their patriotism's fraudulent. They just want power.
It's what they always do. They mythologize the past and then weaponize it against the present. It's just authoritarian propaganda without even a mote of honest history in it. I talked about that in my 2014 book.
But let's not try to beat conservatives at their own game by cynically playing the patriot card and calling the Constitution “sacrosanct" as the Biden White House has. Trying to out-right the right never works and it's invariably pathetic. Moreover, the founders themselves never saw that document as sacrosanct.
To the founders, the Constitution was a compromise that nobody was entirely happy with. It was a contract and everyone fought to make sure the parts of it they liked got enforced. It was later generations which made it holy writ. The founders not only made the Constitution amendable, they talked of the possibility of future generations jettisoning it entirely – just as they had done with the Articles of Confederation. We see this in the papers of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other founders. This was their attitude toward constitutions in general, both federal and state: Everything is replaceable.
For example, in the Massachusetts state constitution, Adams proclaimed that, “[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it."(1)
Likewise, Jefferson felt, “no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." Accordingly, he believed, “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right."
Elsewhere, Jefferson opined, “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."(2)
Elsewhere, Jefferson opined, “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."(2)
Therefore, original intent says “Forget original intent."
The Constitution has always had profound problems and it still does. It's saccharine historically illiterate gibberish to deny this. We need to fix these problems, the sooner the better. For example, we should abolish the Electoral College and the Senate for starters. Both are long overdue.
But allowing an orange authoritarian narcissist to stay in power after America had passed a mandate to remove him isn't among the legion of reasons we need to overhaul or perhaps replace the Constitution.
The proper response to Trump's comment is to point out that conservative love of the Constitution is either superficial or bullshit. It needs to be said. And it needs to be said for three different reasons: First, it's the truth and thus must told on principle. Second, it's politically smart because Democrats do not go on the offensive enough. And third, a functioning democracy needs citizens who think seriously about history.
Otherwise, we get to where we are now.
But bipartisanship-fetishizing centrists cannot see this. Their mythology obscures truth almost as much as conservative mythology does. Trump is the embodiment of conservatism, not an aberration from it. It's obvious in all his comments – including those on the Constitution.
We cannot afford to politely ignore this anymore.
We cannot afford to politely ignore this anymore.
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1) John Adams, Article VII, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780.
2) Thomas Jefferson, Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: Kickerbocker Press, 1904), 12:12.
