The Constitution Is Not Holy Writ
Christians Should Understand Political Reality
America is no longer governed by the founders’ Constitution.
Some think the Constitution was dead on arrival. Others think Lincoln was a tyrant who shredded it, thereby bringing about big government. Maybe the early Progressives, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, were the main culprits who thwarted it, both at the level of political theory and practice. For others it’s FDR and the New Deal. Or LBJ and the Great Society. Lately, it has become acceptable to blame the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. Others have argued that wave after wave of liberalism worked to erode the Constitution’s foundations, turning our republic into a government of, by, and for the kleptocrats.
In any case, despite some disagreement about particulars, the claim that the U.S. Constitution has ceased to guide the American political system should be Politics 101 for those on the Right. We may still abide by the bare forms the Constitution set in place such as age requirements for Congress and the president. The three branches are still present today, as are the titles of those holding political office.
But though the exterior looks to be holding up well in its old age, the interior structures are burned beyond recognition. Professor Kevin Slack of Hillsdale College has cogently noted that “the Constitution and documents like The Federalist no longer explain how government actually works. Indeed they expose its illegitimacy.”
Conservatives have been making the argument for decades that the Left has mangled the Constitution, rejecting the original intent of those who drafted it. The only consideration that could stop one from openly describing the present state of government in America now is prudence. But how prudent is it to continue speeding toward a cliff and remain calm, acting as though a return to constitutional government is just over the horizon?
In place of the founders’ Constitution is the Regime Constitution. It was founded upon the authority of “We the Cosmopolitans” to establish anarcho-tyranny, ensure domestic upheaval for middle America, provide for the defense of the protected classes, promote the Welfare of the elites, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to wine moms and their cats. Joe Biden is the Manager in Chief of our national decline while the managers of the bureaucracies do the real work of governing, backed by phalanxes of public and private institutions that enforce the social mores to which everyone must conform.
The Regime Constitution is a complicated, often extra-political system that centers around the administrative state. Thanks to the Supreme Court in the twentieth century, the administrative state functionally holds all three powers of government, a situation James Madison called “the very definition of tyranny.” It has gobbled up the powers delegated to it by members of Congress, who have preferred to abdicate their responsibility to the public good altogether for getting re-elected.
What we mistakenly call “politics” is fundamentally about empty suits giving B-movie performances that are meant to conceal the fact that they no longer govern in any meaningful sense. As our “political representatives” preen moralistically, countries are bombed, the immigration spigot is kept on full blast, and the chief executive himself can be targeted by the very agencies and departments that are supposed to be under his control.
While Congress used to pass general laws, today they pass gargantuan bills in the dead of night that no one reads, which are filled with giveaways to lobbyists and defense contractors. The Pentagon fails audit after audit but faces nothing more than the strongly-worded letter brigade in Congress. Who in a position of power has ever been held responsible, much less fired, for the Covid debacle or the myriad failures in Afghanistan and Iraq?
How is any of this constitutional according to the founders and those who practiced their traditions?
But for reasons that are hard to fathom, noticing the present state of modern America—that is, the very evils conservatives have been complaining about for decades—is suddenly verboten. What has traditionally been a conservative mainstay is suddenly not conservative.
The most recent dust up in our age of political realignment was set off by American Reformer co-founder Nate Fischer, who posted the following observation:
I understand nostalgia for the constitution, or longing to restore the principles the founders established. But if you will not accept the reality that this is long gone—if you judge others based on fidelity to a set of “principles” that govern no one—then you are a fool.
Screenshots were shared by those, Christians included, who were extremely confident that Fischer supposedly exposed his inner fascist. While a few thoughtful attempts were made to answer him—to his credit, Andrew Walker offered reasoned arguments and not instant vitriol—most, again Christians included, offered uncharitable readings in the extreme.
Erick Erickson, a conservative pundit and member of Fischer’s own denomination, perplexingly called his analysis Marxism, simply misstating Fischer’s argument by wrongly claiming that he “doesn’t actually want the system the founders gave us, but something else.” Lutheran pastor Jordan Cooper misread Fischer’s argument in the exactly same way, thinking he critiqued “the longing to restore of the principles the founders established” itself rather than the feasibility of that project given today’s circumstances.
Former ERLC comms director Dan Darling labeled Fischer’s argument neither a “conservative nor a Christian approach. It’s the same logic of postmodernism reflected in the 1619 project.” A search through his X replies showed no subsequent attempt to substantiate these claims.
What exactly is it about Fischer’s analysis that is beyond the pale? Having the political opinion that the Constitution has been discarded in no way ushers in Caesarism. Describing the current situation is not wishing for it. Noticing reality does not logically entail that one wants to establish tyranny. A description of present realities and a prescriptive argument are two entirely different things.
Casey Wheatland has rightly commented that “America today is increasingly an empire not of laws but of corrupt men. Those who point this out are not conspiracy theorists or dangerous militants…but simply men with functioning eyes and ears.” Having an accurate sense of political reality prepares us to get ready for what may be coming next, which is a far better place than keeping our eyes trained on a mirage.
Ironically, as C. Jay Engel pointed out, the conservatives’ own project of returning to the founders’ Constitution, a goal they’ve claimed to have sought for decades, would be a monumental act of revolution in 2024. It would entail rolling back decades of precedent in constitutional law and practice on the federal, state, and local levels. It would mean impeaching batches of rogue judges. And it would mean fundamentally changing what’s being taught in many of our top law schools and even propagated by the conservative legal movement.
In a related point from Andrew Isker, one wonder how these conservatives would have fared at the time of the Constitution’s creation. After all, the Constitution itself was the product of a revolution against the Articles of Confederation. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 43, the framers appealed to “the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.” If the conservative critics of noticing reality were transported back to those times, like Isker I would imagine they’d be on a one-way ship back to jolly old England, condemning the colonists for treason against the Crown.
Furthermore, it is especially strange to see determined critics of Christian nationalism treat the Constitution as a sacred document, even implying that political opinions like Fischer’s are somehow sinful.
Paul Miller, for instance, claimed that “reports of the constitution’s death have been greatly exaggerated.” This is a political statement that is perfectly open to rebuttal. But it is not an infallible truth from Scripture that must bind all Christians. Politics sometimes demands arguing about the character of the political order itself and whether it has drifted from its foundations—not closing off debate a priori. Christians should not anathematize a perfectly defensible assessment of our present political realities, acting as though it’s somehow out of the bounds of Christian discourse.
And Miller’s second point is just as problematic as his first: “Saying the constitution is dead gives one permission to act extra-constitutionally. That’s a dangerous and self-serving argument.” I’m not sure how under this criterion it would ever be acceptable to point out what the Left has done over at least the last 100 years to destroy constitutional government. And if the Constitution he is speaking of is the present one, the Regime Constitution, how exactly could one even begin to go about reestablishing republican government without working outside of its parameters? Straitjacketing ourselves within a document that in fundamental ways is a dead letter while the Left gets to do what they want merely perpetuates our suicidal status quo.
There is no returning to 1787. It is an open question whether Americans possess the requisite morality and religious habits that are required for constitutional government. We face very different conditions than the founders’ generation, and new statesmen must rise and act to these new realities. An overweening nostalgia combined with moralistic gatekeeping and a doctrinaire approach that Christianizes the present regime will only hasten our slide into chaos.
Instead, American Christians must become knowledgeable about the present state of things. They must understand their duty to oppose the threats they face and cultivate the virtues necessary to combat them. And importantly, they must work to reassert the political in an age that, to quote Leo Strauss, has “an unmanly contempt for politics.” Nothing less will save our country from impending disaster.
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