All The Answers

The Supreme Court currently dominated by Justice Antonin Scalia and his like minded enthusiasts, Thomas, Roberts and Alito have given the phrase "Strict Constructionists" new meaning.

For me, this idea has an old meaning going back to an old black man I used to see sitting in a park. He held in his hand a very worn, leather bound Bible, and he would page through it, stopping at various passages and tell passers by that "All the answers," were contained in this book.

"All the answers to what?"
"All the answers."
"You mean all the answers to life's big mysteries? Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?"
"Those and everything else."
"You mean, like: Should we legalize prostitution? Should we legalize marijuana? Is homosexuality a sin? Is divorce okay? Should we cut down the forests? Should we drill for oil or build more nuclear reactors? Should we allow corporations to promote candidates? Should we allow a teenager to hold up a sign, Bong Hits for Jesus?"
"All the questions, all the answers, right here," he would say, shaking his head at the enormity of it. Right here in this book. If only we are smart enough to read it. Read it properly...and understand."
"What about answers like how to make a vaccine against AIDS?"
"All the answers," he'd say. "All the answers, right here."

Now one thing you can say about absolutists: They are consistent. They do not get caught up in the contradictions which arise when presented with specific cases.

So his utter faith, his belief in that book held a certain charm and reassurance. There is one God, and he speaks through one book and all we have to do is look to that one source and--here's the rub--interpret it and we'll know the Truth.

Having learned in school about evolution, and having absorbed the idea a "Plan" a divine "intention" may take a rather free flowing form, I had my doubts the Bible could point the way to a vaccine against AIDS. Even if it was written by men under the guidance of God, I doubted it covered every problem.

As dreary as many of my courses in science had been, they had at least inculcated a dim awareness there are more questions than answers and each new instance requires a temporary answer which works for while until it is found inadequate and set aside for a new answer to take its place. The immutability of an "answer," loses its impact the more you study nature.

So we learn about microbes. Then we learn about antibiotics which kill microbes. But then we learn microbes have DNA which can mutate and make them invulnerable to those antibiotics until you can design a new antibiotic to kill them in a new way their DNA hasn't adapted to, yet.

The Bible, as far as I know, does not really guide you much there.
But then again, I cannot call myself much of a student of the Bible.
Maybe I'm just ignorant.

All this is a way to say, I cannot really buy the idea of a sacred text which contains all the answers, especially as new problems arise, as DNA mutates and presents new problems.

So it is with me and our Constitution as a sacred text.

Again, I admit I'm ignorant. I really should have learned more about the framers, about Jefferson and Madison and Washington and Franklin and Adams and all those guys and what they knew and what they were thinking.

But I do know, they lived in the eighteenth century, before the human voice could be amplified, before television could bring a politician's image to millions, before the Internet, before automatic weapons and telescopic lenses could transform a single citizen into a killing machine who can kill a President or wipe out a classroom, before corporations could drill for oil, despoil vast prairies, before airplanes could fly from Africa bringing passengers infected with Ebola virus to our shores, before terrorists could steal an atomic weapon and blow up whole cities, before terrorists could steal airplanes and attack cities, before cities, actually, in the modern sense of a New York City, before skyscrapers, before tunnels and suspension bridges.

Having read just a little about Jefferson and his contemporaries, I do have the sense he had insight into his own limitations. I may be wrong, but I think the men who wrote then amended the Constitution had some sense of humility about what they were doing. Maybe I'm wrong, but they seemed to be a little humble about sailing uncharted seas, about creating a form of government which had not been tried in any vast way (except by a few Greek Villagers and some Roman senators in some nascent form) and they were somewhat tentative.

If Jefferson said he thought a little revolution every now and then was necessary for Democracy, I don't think he was thinking about rolling out a guillotine, but about changing course, with an election, maybe even with a Supreme Court ruling, although I gather he would be rather startled by the power and reach of our current Supreme Court.

The writers of the Constitution were men of their times, and in their times slavery was a fact of life and they included slaves in the head count of the population and even mentioned a formula for how to apportion representatives to Congress to account for the number of slaves living in their territory. But, if I understand what these men were like, they did not look into the future thinking they could predict all the problems their creation would encounter, so they built in a lot of flexibility so the government they created could morph and change to face future problems--could accommodate a little revolution now and then.

If they were geniuses, it was in their recognition they did not have all the answers for all times and for all problems. All they were doing was positing a way future problem might be discussed and resolved without resort to civil wars. Smart men, seems to me, would have not attempted to write a document with all the answers. They would have said, you guys solve your own problems which arise in your own times. Don't look to us for all the answers.

They were, in other words, fathers who refused to have all the answers, who refused to play the role of God, who said to their progeny: You're on your own now. Don't look to me or to my writings to solve all your problems for you.

Of course, as Lincoln discovered, the Constitution and the government those men devised did not work to solve every problem.

When you got down to the problem of whether or not a man could be considered property, you got the Dred Scott case, which found in the sacred text an answer that if "Other persons" who counted 2/3 of a white male person had been mentioned, then slavery was enshrined in the Constitution and was all right with the founding fathers.

Until a war changed what the founding fathers said, and a couple of amendments to the Constitution got added. There's a not so little revolution, of the sort Jefferson would probably preferred to avoid.

So when you have Antonin Scalia saying all the answers are in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court cannot do anything but hew to the ideas of those eighteenth century authors, he is missing the very point of the authors, who, I am imagining now, if they were as smart as I suspect they were, knew they did not have all the answers and would be only too glad to believe their government was flexible enough to allow the Supreme Court to write a Brown vs the Board of Education and to begin the process of ending the life of the mutant child of slavery, Jim Crow.

There are people, who for whatever reasons, want to think of the world as an orderly creation, the idea of a single force or God, which becomes disorderly and needs to be brought back into conformity with a single will. And what could be more orderly than a single source?

Well, actually, two sources, the Constitution and the Bible.

Just look there and you do not have to think any further.

Of course, you may not get a polio vaccine, a heart lung machine for heart surgery, airplanes, atomic bombs, computers, cell phones, automatic teller machines. But,you'll have order.

I look at those four justices who believe in strict construction and I cannot help but wonder when they will start wearing powdered wigs.

I do miss those stripes Chief Justice Renquist sewed on his sleeves to show he was the grand master. Those black robes are pretty impressive get ups. But they are so unadorned. The priests I see on TV all have doo dads on their robes--crosses, little symbols of big mysteries, stripes of course, and colors, wow the colors. The Supreme Court justices could use a little of the pizazz of the television preachers. Maybe some shoulder boards with stars on their shoulders. They might take a look at the dazzle on the coats of the generals who really have a sense of color and the possibilities of adornment.

Heaven forbid justices of the Supreme Court should become "Activist" judges, making up new laws the Congress never passed. Of course, what makes you an activist is actually when you make up a new law which offends the sensibility of Justice Scalia. It's okay to make up a law which says a teenager cannot hold up a sign across the street from a school parade which offends the principal and the justices who don't know what it means but they know they don't like the word "Bong." That's just being a strict constructionist.

The guys who wrote the Constitution were clearly against Bong Hits for Jesus.

It's all right there,in the Constitution, along with all the rest of the answers.