A Reader Writes (Ron Paul and The Constitution)

A reader writes:

I got a chuckle out of your reader's comparison of religious fundamentalism with constitutional originalism.

Religious fundamentalism is based on the notion that the Bible is the word of God and therefore inerrant.  Divinely inspired, it cannot be altered and it cannot be deviated from.  The authors of the Constitution claimed no such warrant.  They never thought they had all the answers, and in fact, they penned a specific provision (Article V) allowing the Constitution to be amended.  They realized that times would change and that the Constitution would be adapted, in the later words of John Marshall, to the "various crises of human affairs."  Originalists insist, rightly, that changes to the Constitution (including the addition of powers to the federal government) follow the Article V amendment process, and that any other modification process is illegitimate.    

Religious fundamentalism also is based on the notion that we can know the mind of God.  Your reader seems to think the same applies to originalism -- that it seeks to know the intentions of the Founders and apply those intentions as law.  This, too, is error.  Originalism doesn't care about the single intention or multiple intentions of the Founders.  It cares about what the words say, or more specifically, about the common understanding of the words used at the time the Constitution (and subsequent amendments) were ratified.  Thus the fact that Congress could adopt the 14th Amendment at the same time it permitted segregated schools in the District of Columbia is irrelevant: the Constitution guarantees "equal protection of the laws," and segregation offended the core meaning of equality.

Finally, in its political form (i.e., Christianism), religious fundamentalism seeks to expand the size, scope and mission of government.  Originalism, if it means applying the language of the Constitution, would limit the government's authority, and prevent one political faction from expanding governmental power for its own purposes.  The written-ness of the Constitution acts as a brake on what the government is legitimately permitted to do.  Little wonder that Christianists, Presidentialists, and Big-Government Progressives don't have much use for it.

Another adds:

Far be it from me to speak for Dr. Paul, but I don't think he'd disagree with this statement. He doesn't think the Constitution is a perfect document; he just believes the rule of law means we respect what it actually says and that if we disagree, there is a Constitutional way to correct the problem: the amendment process.

Paul doesn't read the Constitution as a sacred text. That's why he's in favor of most of the amendments that helped correct the imperfect document that the Founding Fathers wrote, and why he'd like to see the 16th Amendment repealed. If Huckabee advocated striking a few passages out of the Bible, then the comparison between him and Paul would be apt but he's not. (Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson did want to strike passages out of the Bible.)