My history textbook – Christ and the Americas – has many virtues, but it’s at its worst when the authoress tries to pontificate. Take the following passage (which comes out of a kind of mini-essay on the subject in the section on the Constitutional Convention):

“If our Constitution has failed in any way, it is not the fault of the governmental system laid down in the Constitution. It is the fault of those who ask, ‘Is it Constitutional?’ instead of asking, ‘Is it in harmony with natural law and the law of God?'”

Leaving the second half aside for now; so, if the Constitution has failed, it’s not the fault of the Constitution?

But why shouldn’t we think that failures in the system laid down in the Constitution may be due to flaws in the Constitution itself? What about the Constitution makes that unthinkable or inappropriate?

Why is it so hard to just say “for all its virtues, the Constitution’s still an imperfect document produced by flawed men in a rather haphazard process and those who made it didn’t think of everything, even things that, in hindsight, they really, really should have, resulting in problems that can’t be solved by appealing to the Constitution because they derive from the system laid down in the Constitution”? I mean, for goodness sakes, it lasted all of, what, three or four election cycles before having to be revised? It took a mere seventy years for disputes over its application to result in civil war (with several close calls before that). We know the thing has problems; why not just admit it?

(On that note, another odd thing she claims is that it worked well until the 20th century, when it began to break down. So, a civil war that burns half the country to the ground doesn’t count as ‘breaking down’ in her mind? Not to mention that the principle of judicial review – her great boogeyman – was established in 1803, so…).

And as for the second part: even if we take her view of things, wouldn’t that also be the fault of the people who laid down no proviso whatsoever for considering “the law of God” in the nation’s governing document, making such questions legally irrelevant? (and no, abstract references to “nature and nature’s god” in the Declaration don’t supply the absence, since it gives no framework for what that means)

I’m not attacking the Constitution; as I say, I think it’s a very good document of its type, and it’s definitely been a boon for us, though it’s not so perfect that we can’t point to it as the source of some of the issues we face. But this is the sort of thing that so often makes reading popular American histories so frustrating: this sort of need to eulogize and moralize, to turn it into a kind of secular mythology with its own sacred, untouchable idols and doctrines that have to be constantly elevated and protected instead of just telling what happened and why. Especially because it so often means we can’t take an honest look at where our problems come from and what to do about them.