The Most Remarkable Document in the World - and Religious Liberty

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Could you summarize Justice Scalia’s “remarks” so that those of us who don’t have 41 minutes to spare for the video could know what this document is and how he claims that it is the most remarkable document in the world? Thank you.
 
Link to transcript of talk given by Justice Scalia

What is our Constitution?

For the seventh Acton Institute Annual Dinner on June 17, 1997, Justice Antonin Scalia gave the evening’s keynote lecture. Despite having spoken these words nearly two decades ago, the message is just as important today as it was that evening. The following essay has been transcribed and...
www.acton.org www.acton.org

Section of quote:
"I want to talk about the Constitution of the United States, something to which I devote a fair amount of my time these days. There is really nothing like it in the world. It is not a great constitution simply because it’s our Constitution. Never again in the history of mankind will a governing document be put together by political parties figuring out how to passel out the power the best way. It will never happen again. From mid-May to mid-September, the most respected and politically experienced people in the nation spent every day of the week in Philadelphia. That’s a whole baseball season. You know that it would not happen that way again today. The great men and women would go up to Philadelphia and they would adopt some general principles and say, “Let the staff work out the details,” and they’d go back to Washington.

I’m a textualist and an originalist. I do not believe that its meaning evolves over generations so that to each age it contains everything that’s good and true and beautiful, even though it’s not really written in there. My philosophy was, until recently, not only not weird, it was orthodoxy. Everybody at least said that the Constitution was that rock, that unchanging, fundamental document that means today what it meant yesterday. And it’s our salvation. " Link of written text above. @Beryllos
 
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Reading the remarks above, he talks about the US Constitution the way believers would talk about the Bible…
“Greatest document in history”…”unchanging”…”it is our salvation”…
What’s with the deification of the constitution and the framers in some conservative circles? It frankly strikes me as bizarre and almost a quasi-religious movement.

It was a secular enlightenment liberal experiment…overall, perhaps, a successful experiment, but certainly not without flaws. If it was so remarkable, it wouldn’t have required numerous amendments…
 
There are two meanings to salvation, and Justice Scalia is very knowledgeable in how words can be used. He is using the first definition which has nothing to do with sin.
1.preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin or loss.
The bible, the very Word of God is not considered a document, far from it. Yes, our Constitution is not meant to be a living Constitution which changes on the whims of society. That is why we have a Bill of Rights and Amendments.
Some opinions about his talk might have more clarity if one reads the transcript in the link or watch the video…it seems that all that was read is the quote picked out from the very beginning of his talk and that was it.
@twf
 
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Okay, now moving on to Religious Liberty…

The words religious (and religion) and liberty do not appear at all in the text version (the introduction to which admits it is only an excerpt).

I suppose the Constitution of the United States has protected religious liberty to a great extent so far. Let’s see how long that lasts, now that the Constitution is being used to enshrine abortion and gay marriage.
 
blog.acton.org

Justice Scalia explains why the ‘living Constitution’ is a threat to America

A majority of Americans—55 percent—now say the U.S. Supreme Court should base its rulings on what the Constitution “means in current times,” while only 41 percent say rulings should be based on what it “meant as originally written,” according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Not sur
blog.acton.org blog.acton.org

The Living Constitution + Majoritarianism = Recipe for Destruction — The Living Constitution has only been around for about 50 years. But it is already appears poised to undermine 200 years of the rule of law:

“> The Bill of Rights is devised to protect you and me against, who do you think? The majority. My most important function on the Supreme Court is to tell the majority to take a walk. And the notion that the justices ought to be selected because of the positions that they will take, that are favored by the majority, is a recipe for destruction of what we have had for 200 years. (W)” SJAS
 
Beryllos said:
Let’s see how long that lasts, now that the Constitution is being used to enshrine abortion and gay marriage.
Click to expand...
To illustrate this by few scenarios:

Health care providers (doctors, nurses, and others) who refuse to provide abortion services – How well is their religious liberty protected when our law determines that it is a woman’s right to get an abortion?

Health care providers and social workers, psychologists, and others who speak or act in opposition to gender ideology (e.g., transgender children).

Priests, ministers, and public officials who refuse to preside over a gay marriage – Once again, religious liberty goes head-to-head with “equal protection” (14th Amendment).

I fear it won’t be long before the faithful are actively persecuted for these and other affronts to personal liberty.
 
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