As a part of my own celebration of our nation's birthday this weekend, I turned on This Week with Christiane Amanpour.  She provided a "Focus on the Founders" and a part of the focus was an expose on the US Constitution.  The program included a four-member panel to discuss controversies that surround our Constitution.  This Week even came with its own preamble.  

The This Week preamble began with a physical description.  We were told that the original document is maintained under glass.  We were told that our Constitution is the oldest living Constitution in the world that is still operational.  We were told that our Constitution is the shortest Constitution ever written in just over 4,400 words.  All are statements that any reasonable person would accept as true.  The This Week preamble identified the Constitution as having originally failed to provide equality to all by allowing the continuance of slavery and by its failure to provide suffrage to women.  This is a bit understated but still true.  The preamble then went on to describe a history of controversy that has surrounded the interpretation of the Constitution as a "tug of war" over its meaning.  We know this to be true and this is certainly nothing new to our generation.  The presentation then described the Tea Party as a group that reportedly believes that income taxes, the Federal Reserve and national healthcare are beyond what the founders intended.  The preamble expressed a desire of those of us in the Tea Party to go back to view the founders had in 1787.  The controversy over interpretations was neatly summed up by comparing the Constitution to wrapping paper.  The parallel was intended to connote that both sides in arguments before the court present their cases from a perspective that the Constitution is on their side.  John Donvan (I believe this was the name of the narrator) referenced issues like Nixon's argument to keep his tapes, flag burning and the protection of the unborn in the terms of wins and losses where both sides were certain the Constitution protected their position. 

I do not believe that the Tea Party is intent on returning to the exact image of the original founders except as it would pertain to the interpretation of the Constitution but this must include all amendments, one of which created the income tax.  Thus, the inclusion of the income tax issue along with the Federal Reserve and Obamacare taxed credibility.  We believe the court has the responsibility to interpret the Constitution and all its amendments as they were written, as they were intended.  This is a little different from what was reported to be our position.  I also am bewildered as to why each of the examples chosen of cases decided by the Supreme Court were cases where thus far the progressive leftists in this country have prevailed.  Was this a subtle attempt to introduce the bias of the progressive left into the view that was being presented?  Perhaps this would not have bothered me if it were not the introduction of Historian and Professor David Brinkley, Rice University, into this "factual" preamble.  Sprinkled within all the other statements that had previously been presented as fact was a statement by Dr. Brinkley that our founding documents are "flexible, that they are intended to be pulled and bent in different directions as each era dictates."   This statement is purely opinion.  It does not belong in a preamble that was intended to present a factual glimpse of the topic for the day.  Our Constitution was not intended to be reinterpreted as each era might dictate.  This can be proven by the fact that the amendment process was placed in the document to provide for change.  Above all else, our founders feared the influence of majorities and did not want the rights of the minorities to be trampled.  This is specifically why the Constitution was made difficult to amend.  There is a requirement for a 2/3 super-majority in the Congress and a 3/4 super majority of the state legislatures to amend the Constitution.  This has only happened 17 times since the document's original ratification.  The first ten amendments were a part of the original ratification and the Constitution would never have been ratified had it not been for the acceptance of the Bill of Rights.  There is no requirement for it to be stretched, flexed, folded, mutated or bent as has been done by activist courts particularly during the twentieth century apparently with the approval of Dr. Brinkley.  One has to wonder how Dr. Brinkley would regard a shift of court opinion that might cause it to "evolve" in a more conservative direction.          

Upon the completion of this preamble, we were introduced to our four panelists for the coming discussion.  

• George Will - constant conservative fixture on This Week since the days of journalist David Brinkley, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson

• Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson - a seemingly embittered man who drew every argument from the initial position of the founders allowance of slavery

• Harvard History Professor Jill Lepore - a live example of the presentation one might expect from a Harvard professor.  She spoke in a rapid babble that contributed very little of real substance but I am certain she believed she was contributing much 

• Time Magazine Editor Richard Stengel - a promoter of a living, breathing Constitution certain that the law is whatever the court might say it is

Will described what he considered a promiscuous expansion of the federal government in recent years and he pointed to the current administration as extending its reach well beyond the enumerated powers of the federal government.  He believes, as do I, that the Obama administration has assumed unprecedented power.  In Will's words, if the Congress' power to regulate commerce extends toward the ability to require a citizen to purchase a commodity, the Congress then has the power to do anything.  

Will recognized the attitudes of the founders and their regard for a central federal government as inherently dangerous yet necessary.  It was for this reason that the delegated powers are few and defined.  Will believes it to be oxymoronic to describe the document as living.  Will recognizes as do I that the purpose of any Constitution is to provide a fixed standard to control the government.  The Constitution recognizes that majorities are dangerous, thus the Constitution and thus the difficulty in amending the document.  This would not be so if the document were to be considered "living".  

Dyson had a difficult time extending his comments beyond the fact that the Constitution originally allowed slavery.  He incorrectly spoke of the abolishment of slavery as resulting from a new more enlightened interpretation.  This is incorrect.  Slavery was permanently ended because of the 13th Amendment.  He claimed erroneously that was it not for the Constitution being a living document that he would not be allowed today to sit on that stage as an equal.  Again, incorrect.  I would believe it questionable that the court in 1865 would have been as sympathetic as the state legislatures toward the issue of slavery.  The point is we do not know.  

In all of Dyson's comments, he continued to come back to the same theme.  Some were historically left out.  He did not attempt to soften his charges by understanding why the document excluded the abolishment of slavery as it was originally written.  He did not attempt to examine the circumstance that in 1787 the primary need was to form the union.  Those in the Constitutional Convention understood that as thirteen independent colonies they could not survive.  One by one, they would be vulnerable to foreign powers, specifically, England, France and Spain.  The founders understood that as a matter of self-preservation they would have to fight the battle of slavery later.  However, those in the north who were ardently opposed to slavery did place language in the document that would slow and ultimately end the practice.  They imposed a date certain at which time the importation of slaves would no longer be allowed.  They also imposed a 3/5 factor on the slave for purposes of apportionment.  They did not want the south to be over-represented in the Congress by counting slaves in their population when those men and women were not free.  Repeatedly I hear people point to the Constitution and say that the founders valued the black man and woman as only 3/5 human.  This is hogwash.  They wanted to discourage the practice of slavery by reducing the number of Congressmen that could represent the slave states and thus move more rapidly toward the actual abolishment of the practice. 

Dyson believes the Constitution has been hijacked by people with a narrow, vicious, parochial vision.  Was he referring to me and to others in the Tea Party movement or the more recent elected members in the Congress?  From Dyson's point of view, the Congress has the power to do whatever it wants and the federal government has the power to interpret the Constitution any way they want.  This should be frightening to everybody.     

Jill Lepore, the Harvard Professor pointed to the current controversy over the Constitution as a crisis that is exaggerated.  She acknowledged that controversy over interpretation has always been present and this era is no different from any other.  She spoke to the almost religious aspect of arguments that favor the Constitution.  She acknowledged the reverence toward the document almost as if it were sacred.  She saw the Constitution as moving toward a stronger federal government by comparing the document to the original Articles of Confederation.  Still, the powers are as Will identified, limited and defined.  If the document is treated with reverence, the reason is likely that it is this document that protects our liberty.  Why should we not revere the Constitution and work to ensure its correct interpretation?    

She attempted to paint Left and Right into corners by saying the Right is more appreciative of the Constitution and the Left is more drawn toward the Revolution itself.  What then is the reason that I am flying two flags today, one with 50 stars and the other with 13?  The entire Tea Party movement is one that appreciates the revolution and all events that led to it and that brought us the liberty that the Constitution is to guarantee.  

Richard Stengel from Time Magazine chose an analogy of the Constitution as a blueprint.  He extended his example by saying the Constitution defined the house, not the color of the curtains or the number of floors.  I only wish his wisdom had extended beyond this to acknowledge that there are and have been persons present on the Court who have elected to change the size of the house including the number of floors.  This is not something that would be consistent with any blueprint without someone actually changing the blueprint.  This is the objection of the Tea Party and Stengel missed it with his own analogy.  He pointed to George Bush as being guilty of the greatest expansion of federal power with perhaps the exception of Lincoln and FDR.  I can only assume he was speaking of the Patriot Act and the suspension of habeas corpus.  He did not say this and sadly, it was not challenged.  Stengel sees the document as a-religious.  I think it clear that religion held an important role in the lives of the founders, so important that they would not ratify the Constitution without the freedom to worship and the prohibition against the government creating a state religion as was ultimately placed in the 1st Amendment.

Stengel's point of view of Constitutional law was that a law is unconstitutional if the Supreme Court decides it to be unconstitutional.  If we are to be a nation of laws and not of men then we cannot give this kind of oligarchic power to nine men and women in black robes.  There are inherent truths that neither the Congress nor the Court can modify.  We should all be fearful of attitudes like this one presented by Stengel.  One might imagine a circumstance where the Supreme Court decides that all news articles must first be approved by the government to ensure accuracy and a theme consistent with the direction of the administration.   Would he accept this if the SCOTUS were to decide it to be Constitutional?   

At the conclusion of the discussion, Christiane asked panelists to identify their favorite founder:

Stengel - Madison because of his intelligence - yet Stengel ignores Madison's positions as expressed in the Federalist Papers.

Lepore - Benjamin Franklin's sister for personal reasons that I did not note.  

Dyson - Jefferson - This surprises me.   Yes, he had a child by Sally Hemings but Sally was his slave.  Jefferson was a slave owner from Virginia, a slave state.  

Will - Madison - He pointed to the fact that Madison was a part of the Princeton Class of 1771 and the irony as to whether his arguments that are now two centuries old can save our Constitution from the ideas of Woodrow Wilson, a member of the Princeton Class of 1879.