Doing without the U.S. Constitution. .

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I recently read the book containing the exchange of Benedict 16 and Jurgen Habermas.

Benedict’s piece was compelling; Habermas, instead, seems to be musing over some of the deeper issues connected with postmodernity and constitutional legitimacy. . . he WANTS to say we should support a written constitution, and he wants to agree with a written constitution as a Rawlsian modus vivendi in a world of pluralism.

However, he can’t really find reasons that are not self-referential: obey the constitution because you should obey the constitution.

Without a non-constitutional common good or set of values, can there be a real constitution? Or is it all a matter of who has the power and the gun?

Me, more and more given the audacities of the Current Occupant, I identify as very much Catholic. . . and less and less American.
 
Societal Agreement governs all Constitutionality. Without it you have ‘anything goes’ (or you approach anything goes). Who gets to say what flies at that point is always governed by violence (or at least the threat of violence), which either coalesces in violence, or the return to the same or some similar ‘constitutionality.’ (paraphrased TERMS, J.M.Thomas, R., 2012)
 
Captain_America said:
However, he can’t really find reasons that are not self-referential: obey the constitution because you should obey the constitution.

Without a non-constitutional common good or set of values, can there be a real constitution? Or is it all a matter of who has the power and the gun?
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Can’t just throw out the constitution. The founding document of the Country. You don’t have to agree with it though, that’s the beauty of it.
 
Can’t just throw out the constitution. The founding document of the Country. You don’t have to agree with it though, that’s the beauty of it.
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The point is , believe, that even a Constitutional democracy relies on a people of faith, or at least a culture that has a common belief in objective dignity of the human being whose rights and liberties are inalienable or better, bestowed from God, not defined from men.

The Founding Fathers, while not overtly Christian, were clearly believers in a God from whom we were given life and endowed with the liberties enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The clearly expected the American Experiment to rise and fall on the American Peoples faith in God. America’s very life ,despite the secular arguments, depends on the faith of her people.
 
robert_chacon said:
The point is , believe, that even a Constitutional democracy relies on a people of faith, or at least a culture that has a common belief in objective dignity of the human being whose rights and liberties are inalienable or better, bestowed from God, not defined from men.

The Founding Fathers, while not overtly Christian, were clearly believers in a God from whom we were given life and endowed with the liberties enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The** clearly expected the American Experiment to rise and fall on the American Peoples faith in God**. America’s very life ,despite the secular arguments, depends on the faith of her people.
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Clearly believers in God, but clearly non-theists. That’s all I feel comfortable enough to say on the matter. Because I can’t really understand what you called for in the bold part.
 
robert_chacon said:
The point is , believe, that even a Constitutional democracy relies on a people of faith, or at least a culture that has a common belief in objective dignity of the human being whose rights and liberties are inalienable or better, bestowed from God, not defined from men.

The Founding Fathers, while not overtly Christian, were clearly believers in a God from whom we were given life and endowed with the liberties enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The clearly expected the American Experiment to rise and fall on the American Peoples faith in God. America’s very life ,despite the secular arguments, depends on the faith of her people.
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“Constitutional Democracy” is an oxymoron. In a constitutional system, everybody is ruled not by majority consensus but by the code of law.

That is its strength, because leaders come and go but the Constitution remains. Only 27 amendments in almost 250 years in effect shows that it works very well.

ICXC NIKA
 
Sorry, typo. That should have been: “They (the Founding Fathers) clearly expected the American Experiment…”
They were mostly Theists, some Deists and most were even denominational. But the very language of the Constitution presupposes a belief in a God who was responsible for the very life and liberties of the man. The rights of the Constitution were not just a set of guarantees cast for just a temporal moment in the development of the nation but rather a belief in intrinsic , objective and eternal freedoms owed to men by their creator. Even the 2nd Amendment speaks to a right of the human being to protect himself against ANYONE, ever the government. Thus, the ability of the Constitution to remain authoritative rests in the faith of the American People to believe in objective truths of life and other liberties bestowed by a God , not simply agreed to by the majority through a democratic process. The Constitution protects minorities not because their rights rest with benevolence of the majority but because certain rights are eternal regardless of the will of the majority.

If we have no faith in a God and or least objective truths which cannot be denied, the guiding principles of government degenerate to the will of the majority which can change from generation to generation or even moment to moment. The Founding Fathers were aware that their “experiment” presupposed a faith in these objective truths. Some were even explicit in their belief that American democracy relied on the faith of her people in God or at least Divine Providence. Early writers and observers of the time also commented that the fulcrum of American democracy was this faith of Americans.
 
robert_chacon said:
They were mostly Theists, some Deists and most were even denominational. But the very language of the Constitution presupposes a belief in a God who was responsible for the very life and liberties of the man. The rights of the Constitution were not just a set of guarantees cast for just a temporal moment in the development of the nation but rather a belief in intrinsic , objective and eternal freedoms owed to men by their creator.
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A belief in God, yes. Which God, no. Sets up religious freedom. I’m not claiming to know they were all in agreement. Quite possibly some were quite devout, but for sure some were against the church, while maintaining their belief in *a *God
 
“Constitutional Democracy” is an oxymoron. In a constitutional system, everybody is ruled not by majority consensus but by the code of law.
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No its not. You can have a Republican Democracy, which is a representative democracy, not a vote of every person. That is not an oxy moron it describes the participation of democracy.

A Constitutional democracy simply defines the ultimate source of rights by which a democratic process is limited in its legislative and administrative capacity.

Grammatically perhaps it doesnt work. My writing was never great, but that is what I meant, and i think most people understand it as I wrote it. \

Thanks though.
 
revert_jen said:
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Isn’t theism a belief in one or more gods?

–Jen
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Yes, a slight contradiction because I omitted “a” so to clarify - “Clearly believers in a God” works more for how I intended
Theists follow a particular dogma. A deist just believes in a God, some God somewhere.
I was referring to quotes like
Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin
  • To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian - Thomas Jefferson*
    That doesn’t indicated non-belief. Just non-theist. & In Jefferson’s case, only with matters of state. He quite possibly was a theist
 
Captain_America said:
However, he can’t really find reasons that are not self-referential: obey the constitution because you should obey the constitution.
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You mean like obey the Church, because the Church says to? Or, obey the Church, because the Bible says to… But who gave us the Bible? The Church…:cool:
 
robert_chacon said:
The point is , believe, that even a Constitutional democracy relies on a people of faith, or at least a culture that has a common belief in objective dignity of the human being whose rights and liberties are inalienable or better, bestowed from God, not defined from men.

The Founding Fathers, while not overtly Christian, were clearly believers in a God from whom we were given life and endowed with the liberties enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The clearly expected the American Experiment to rise and fall on the American Peoples faith in God. America’s very life ,despite the secular arguments, depends on the faith of her people.
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I disagree with the fate of our country relies on those of faith. If people feel that life is sacred and that it should be protected would that not be a suitable substitute for a god saying approximately the same. That each person should have the right to live peacefully.
 
I think the point is that having a constitution ends up requiring its adherents to have reasons to support the constitution—reasons which are necessarily essentially non-constitutional.

They may be religious values of some type, or some deeply held ethical beliefs/philosophical anthropology.

But the constitution can’t legitimize itself, at least not initially. One can chart a long record of social justice stemming from a constitution and appraise the moral worthiness of a constitution, and thus the constitution can legitimize itself. . . but you need another standard, non-constitutional, by which to appraise the constitution in hand.
 
sealoch said:
I disagree with the fate of our country relies on those of faith. If people feel that life is sacred and that it should be protected would that not be a suitable substitute for a god saying approximately the same. That each person should have the right to live peacefully.
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BTW, you might be irritating some folks here unnecessarily by putting the word God with a lower-case “g”.
 
Captain_America said:
I think the point is that having a constitution ends up requiring its adherents to have reasons to support the constitution—reasons which are necessarily essentially non-constitutional.
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Ah, I think I get the paradox. consider me stumped
 
The big difference between the US constitution and the rest is the recognition that all rights come from God and not men. Also in the past governments existed for their own gratification without regard to people. People were subjects with no rights. This continues to every country today. People’s rights come from the government not God. That all changed we are now have the responsibility to govern ourselves. Anyone remember “of the people by the people and for the people?” The government has now over stepped its bounds and usurped it proper place. We do have the right and duty as American citizens to remove that government and install one that reflects the original values.

John Adams who also wrote the Massachusetts State constitution was a strong Christian. He said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The Massachusetts constitution by the way closely mirrors the US constitution showing a reverence for Godly principals. I really believe a good number of the founders were mindful of the Christian heritage this country was founded on starting with the Pilgrims whose goal was to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the natives. But like all things there were those who came along and undermined the original intention.
 
sealoch said:
I disagree with the fate of our country relies on those of faith. If people feel that life is sacred and that it should be protected would that not be a suitable substitute for a god saying approximately the same. That each person should have the right to live peacefully.
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If you decide your own morality from scratch, you can decide to change it at any time, by majority vote, or whatever. If you acknowledge that a certain amount of the moral code is “built in” by God, then you understand that you cannot change the reality of right and wrong.

That’s the difference.

–Jen
 
Doing without a Constitution at all would surely be catastrophic Yet Constitutions are only as good as they are obeyed. A Constitution can be wrongly interpreted on purpose, in which case the Constitutional integrity is frustrated, as in the case of defending abortion on demand as a Constitutional right or a right of privacy. Or defending pornography as a right of free speech. Constitutions are useful up to a point, but if the Supreme Court can bend a Constitution to say anything they want it to say, corruption has set in. Is it time for a new Constitutional Convention? Considering how much corruption has already set in with the old Constitution, I worry about the prospects. :eek:

Christianity is a bedrock for common sense. In a Christian world people would consider it absurd to be killing their unborn offspring and certainly not a right. In a Christian world people would think that pornography is surely not to be a protected form of free speech, since pornography deals with actions rather than words. In a Christian world the idea of a man marrying another man would be laughably absurd. So this Constitution we live under may not longer be Christian, and may no longer even stand for common sense.
 
USMC GENERAL ‘MAD DOG’ MATTIS’ QUOTES…HOOORAAH!
“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
(San Diego Union Tribune: utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/19/mattisretiring/4/)
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You can just “throw-out” the Constitution, but it would have strong negative consequences that perhaps should not be avoided by those attempting to change it otherwise.
 
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