Over at Greg‘s place, I compare the GOP’s decision to avoid reading the superseded text of the Constitution to the decision to publish a version of Mark Twain‘s Huckleberry Finn without the word “nigger.”
The reason to include the superceded text is to remind us that the Constitution, while a remarkable document, was not carved out of stone tablets by a finger of light at the summit of Mount Sinai. It was written by men, and despite its promise, it possessed flaws at the moment of its creation that still reverberate today. Republicans could use the history lesson — last year they attacked Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan during her nomination process because one of her mentors, Justice Thurgood Marshall, had the audacity to suggest that the Constitution was flawed since it didn’t consider black people to be full human beings.
Avoiding the parts of the Constitution they don’t like is something this current crop of Republicans has raised to an art form. While Republicans have introduced new rules calling for new legislation to indicate how it is constitutional, Rep. Scott Garrett tried to impose a rule that would make it impossible for anyone to invoke the “general welfare” and “necessary and proper” clauses in Article I, Section 8. Rep. Steve King just introduced a bill to end birthright citizenship in defiance of the plain language of the 14th Amendment. As I noted earlier, King is introducing a bill rather than a constitutional amendment because it’s “it’s easier to do.” All over the country, conservative state lawmakers are doing the same, hoping that sympathetic conservative activist judges might acquiesce to a radical reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment.
The purpose of today’s reading wasn’t so much reverence for the Constitution as it is about claiming ownership of it, an attempt to avoid recognizing, as Dahlia Lithwick writes, that conservatives “are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support.” Merely mocking the effort simply reinforces the idea that conservatives revere the Constitution while liberals don’t take it seriously.
Instead, liberals should welcome it–and be just as aggressive in reminding Americans that the parts of the Constitution Republicans don’t like are no less a part of it than the ones they do. As for the parts of the Constitution that have been superseded, Ezra Klein is right to note that there’s a reason why “In this country, we amend the Constitution. We don’t edit it.”