Yesterday, I discussed Rush Limbaugh's odd defense of slavery in an attempt to demagogue a 2001 statement from Obama that the original Constitution was "flawed." Obama also said that the Constitution is "a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now," a statement I would agree with: the strength of the Constitution is that while it did not always make good on the liberty it promised, it was amenable to changes that would fulfill that promise. Nevertheless, Limbaugh asks:
How is he going to -- I asked this earlier -- how is he gonna place his hand on the Bible and swear that he, Barack Hussein Obama, will uphold the Constitution that he feels reflects the nation's fundamental flaw. Fundamental. When he talks about a fundamental flaw, he's not talking about a flaw that can be fixed. Fundamental means that this document is, from the get-go, wrong.
The Constitution's acceptance of slavery, and its valuation of slaves as "three-fifths" of a person, was a fundamental flaw that contradicted the very principles outlined in the Constitution. It was fundamental precisely because it occurred at the moment of the document's creation. But the genius of the Founders was in establishing a political document that could change, if necessary, to extend the freedoms it initially denied. This, as I argued yesterday, reflects the recognition of the Founders themselves that the Constitution could be flawed in some way, for this reason it contains a process for amending it. Among others, our communist Chief Justice John Roberts believes that the amendment process ""did allow some fundamental flaws to be addressed like slavery." Indeed, Roberts notes that these fundamental flaws were serious enough to drag us into a bloody civil war by the 1860s. Creeping Sovietism.
Nevertheless, I'm mostly happy with the way the Constitution is today, with the exception of its disenfranchisement of residents of the District of Columbia. I would support an amendment to grant the District statehood. The founders may not have anticipated that the District would become a metropolis in its own right, and if they had wanted the Constitution to be treated like religious dogma, they would not have included a process by which the document could be changed. Yet the right insists on treating the Constitution like the Bible, which may be related to their tendency to project their own religious views upon it. Does this mean I believe the Constitution is "flawed"? In this small way, yes.
But I'm not alone. It's clear that Sarah Palin believes the Constitution to be flawed, because she wants to change it, by adding an amendment to establish marriage as exclusively being between a man and a woman.
I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that's where we would go. I don't support gay marriage.
As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yet Palin insists that the Constitution be changed from its original flawed design in order to include a restriction on personal liberty, something that may be in accordance with the cultural sensibilities of the founders but certainly not the principles of the document they created. Yet, if Palin does not believe the Constitution is "fundamentally" flawed, she certainly believes it is flawed enough to encourage changes that are as antithetical to its fundamental principles as to beg the question of whether or not liberals should be asking the same thing of Palin that Limbaugh asks of Obama.
--A. Serwer
