Fascinating insights into how rightwingers view the Constitution

by: Carnacki

Thu Oct 01, 2009 at 11:03:49 AM EDT

Bruce Webb had a comment at Talking Points Memo on rightwingers wanting a military coup:

I coincidentally have a post about this on my blog called "Conservatives and the Ancient Constitution". The Anglo-American Common Law tradition doesn't rest on any written constitution, instead it appeals to what the lawyers called the Ancient Constitution which is not only older than recorded history but by definition perfect and unchanging. The Conservative movement that grew up around Edmund Burke in Britain around the time of our Revolution explicitly appealed to the Ancient Constitution in defending the rights of Parliament, i.e. property owners, against both the government and the people. American Conservatism simply internalized Burkean Ancient Constitution Conservatism. Which I think explains their tendency to take our written Constitution cafeteria style, regarding it an an imperfect reflection of the perfect Ancient Constitution.

When these people claim they are 'Originalists' they mean it, their allegiance is to a Constitution that is literally invisible to you and me but which they see as clearly endorsing the rights of property owners to resist taxation and to limit the demands on them by the property-less.

For example it is on one level insane to say that the income tax is unconstitutional. Because the Sixteenth Amendment is clear as day. And it is pretty odd to say that the 'General Welfare' clause seen both in the Preamble and in Article 1 Sec 8 'Powers of Congress' is not legally meaningful. But if you regard both as violations of the underlying Ancient Constitution then all becomes clear. I doubt one reichnut in a thousand could articulate this but clearly they are living in a world where 'Things Just Are Not Right' and that everything would just be better if we got it realigned with the "The Way it Ought To Be', a way that is only dimly and imperfectly reflected in the written Constitution and the statutes enacted pursuant to that.

I don't know that in the end it makes a difference whether you talk about the Ancient Constitution, or Natural Law, or Revealed Truth as reflected in the Bible, these people know what they believe and believe what they know, and our pitiful attempts to point to events in the reality based continuum are just not persuasive.