As Conservative as the Constitution

Mitt Romney appeared on Meet the Press yesterday, and in typical Mitt Romney fashion, twisted himself into knots trying to explain the inexplicable - his ever changing, ever evolving, never set-in-stone views on everything. As I've said before, Mitt Romney has never met a position his audience didn't like. Right now that means Etch-a-Sketching his way back towards the center for the general election, but let us not forget that very recently, Mitt was a "severe" conservative.

I find the term amusing, but also strikingly accurate. When I hear the word severe I often think of an illness. A severe cold for example. There is a negative connotation. To me, Romney painted an accurate picture of the far right with the term. The ideas espoused by many of these people are awful. Their social views are abhorrent, and their economic policies are misguided and have been tried and found wanting. If there still existed such a thing as a moderate Republican, a right-of-center pragmatist just as the President is a left-of-center pragmatist, then Republicans could contribute to the national debate. Alas, Mitt Romney is the closest thing to a right-of-center pragmatist, but since he has the spine of an eel, I don't trust anything he says. Severe conservatism is an epidemic that has taken over most of the Republican party to the detriment of the country.

But Romney pivoted to the center on Sunday, and instead of a severe conservative he is now only "as conservative as the Constitution." This sounds less extreme, and it probably is, but it is still deeply misguided and represents a severe step backwards for America.

For starters, the Constitution is hardly a conservative document. Though far from perfect, it was, at the time it was penned, well ahead of its time. A first-of-its-kind document, the Constitution represented something that had never really been tried before. It established a new form of government and provided people essential and basic protection under the law. It is only conservative from the perspective of someone living in the 21st century. At the time it was written, it was perhaps the most progressive document on the planet.

But today, it is most certainly a conservative document, and that is part of the problem. Why on Earth are some people committed to running a 21st century society based on laws established in the late 18th century? It's worth mentioning that the all-knowing founding fathers were wise enough to establish a mechanism to amend the Constitution and then to immediately amend it themselves, giving us the Bill of Rights. It's worth mentioning that even though the original document was forward-thinking, it had to be amended multiple times to eliminate grave injustices such as the acceptance of slavery and the denial of women's suffrage. As society moves forward and new challenges arise, we should have a means of addressing them.

The point of a Constitution in my view is two-fold; it must establish stability so that people have confidence that they are acting within the law thus establishing a solid foundation for society, but it must also allow for the flexibility of a rapidly changing world so that we are not left behind. The United States Constitution is stability heavy, with almost no room for flexibility. It is rigid in an age in which we need to be more nimble. 

This is best illustrated by an oft-mentioned (at least by me) episode from a few years ago in which the rights of people on the terrorist-suspect list were being debated. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham defended his position that terrorist suspects could be barred from airplanes, but not prevented from buying a gun by pointing out that airplanes weren't mentioned in the Constitution!

Senator Graham is right. Airplanes are not mentioned in the Constitution. Apparently, the foresight of the founders extended only so far. Wise though they were, there was not a Nostradamus among them, and therefore they were unable to fully anticipate how complex a place the world would become. Despite some of these glaring, but understandable, omissions, there are still those in this country who would have us be governed by the Constitution as it was originally written, line for line, word for word, letter for letter. This is, quite frankly, asinine.

So when Mitt Romney says he is as Conservative as the Constitution, we should be afraid. Such a statement reflects his profound misunderstanding of what the Constitution meant at the time it was written, and also shackles us to a a worldview in which the yeoman farmer will explore and tame the vast wilderness of the American frontier.

The Constitution is rightfully the foundation for our society. It reflects the values on which our country was founded, and provides us with a sense of what it means to be American, and a stable set of laws on which to govern our society. However the Constitution does not and cannot answer all the questions posed by a complicated 21st century world. Healthcare reform and airplanes were not on the minds of the founding fathers, and if we continue to think we can determine the path forward based on a rigid interpretation of an 18th century document, then we are sure to find ourselves looking up at the societies who have found a way to create both stability and flexibility.