Posted on 02/08/2024 5:58:26 AM PST by Heartlander
Most conservatives view the U.S. Constitution as the central element that binds the identity of the nation together, but constitutions do not make peoples; peoples make constitutions.
The Catholic political theorist and enlightenment skeptic Joseph de Maistre believed that no true constitution can ever be written by human hands but can only be inscribed on the hearts of a nation’s people by the almighty God. For Maistre, the notion that a constitution would, in and of itself, create the character of a nation was absurd. The values and norms contained in a constitution reflect the traditions and folkways that organically emerge from the character of a people.
The shared moral vision of the people, which serves as the real force of the constitution, pre-exists the written document itself. Any rights enumerated in the document are only a written formalization of that which is already held deeply sacred by the people, and their protection is entirely dependent on the continuance of that tradition.
Maistre did not push for a universal form of government but instead believed that the best government would be one that naturally fit the needs and traditions of the people over which it ruled. An artificially imposed regime with no connection to the ways in which different communities lived their lives could not hope to govern them well. Virtuous leaders had a duty to guide their people toward a better future, but that could only be done in the context of a shared understanding of the common good. A constitution could not enforce this vision; it could only represent the spirit that already existed within the polis.
America is a vast and complicated nation. It has always been a collection of very different regions, cultures, and traditions separated by the kind of geographical distances that would have formed individual nations in a place like Europe. This is why the country was originally governed as a confederation of separate states instead of one unified whole.
Due to its divergent ways of life, geographical separation, and intermittent waves of large-scale immigration, America never truly achieved ethnogenesis. Instead, it relied on one consistent factor that most of its residents shared: protestant Christianity.
While Catholic, Jewish, and eventually Muslim waves of immigration would all arrive, America’s initial population were protestant Christians, and it is from this firmament that the moral vision of America arose.
America was founded by those who chose to leave their homes and strike out for new lands rather than compromise their way of life, and that deep instinct to prefer exit over assimilation persisted well into the nation’s history.
Due to its size and regional diversity, America never truly formed a single national culture or identity. Whenever two or more groups disagreed, rather than being forced to reconcile and become one people, they simply split, venturing farther and farther into a seemingly endless frontier. A federal model allowed individual communities and states to operate very differently as long as they held to the shared moral framework of protestant Christianity. Subsidiarity, the idea that the political problems should be resolved as close to the locality where they originate as possible, meant that the traditions and folkways of each region could be maintained while still working inside the larger system of the nation.
The religious character of America’s people may have changed, but the bedrock of its founding document has not. In modern America, the Constitution is held up as a secular procedural blueprint for objectively navigating disagreements between groups with vastly different moral visions, but nothing could be farther from the truth. As John Adams explained, the Constitution is made for a moral and religious people, and it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.
America’s founders did not believe that the Constitution contained any kind of magical universal property of governance. They understood that the protestant Christian moral vision shared by most of the populace was critical to the nation’s success.
I do not call myself a Christian nationalist, not because I disagree with the idea that biblical principles should be reflected in the laws of our nation but because this has been a core aspect of the American nation since its inception. The problem with the term Christian nationalism is that is turns a crucial pillar of our American identity into a fashionable political slogan that can be easily painted as new and radical by a hostile media elite. An approach to politics that is fundamentally protestant in its character is not revolutionary or novel. It is exactly what the Constitution represents.
As hard as it may be to admit, we are no longer really governed by the Constitution, primarily because we are no longer the kind of people who can be.
Conservatives like to believe that restoration of constitutional governance will fix our woes, but the founding document cannot make a people virtuous or grant them liberty. The Constitution was only ever the formalization of a way of life present in America’s founding stock, and without that shared character, our most precious documents become meaningless. The Constitution was never meant to objectively mediate the differences of two sides with radically different moral visions, and it never will.
Protestant Christianity was central to the identity of the United States and the formation of its Constitution. Until the nation reforges a shared moral vision on that anvil, it will continue to be governed by the corrupt progressive theocratic oligarchy that currently terrorizes its people.
We have a government run by former Nazis, communists and Kenyans now. We’re screwed.
We have a government run by former Nazis, communists and Kenyans now. We’re screwed.
We have a government run by former Nazis, communists and Kenyans now. We’re screwed.
“We have a government run by former Nazis, communists and Kenyans now. We’re screwed.”
And an uninterested, stupid public. The public thinks freedom means not having to work.
“We have a government run by former Nazis, communists and Kenyans now. We’re screwed.”
And an uninterested, stupid public. The public thinks freedom means not having to work.
1st Amendment - Does the government censor people and punish religious thought? Yes it does. Sometimes the government works with corporations to get it done, but the government drive this oppression.
2nd Amendment — Does the government infringe the right to keep and bear arms? All the time.
10th Amendment — Does the federal government allow states to control 99% of everything? Not a frickin’ chance.
25th Amendment - If the president were debilitated by senility, would the government take the obvious steps of removing the president? So far, the answer is “No”.
Some good points.
So, there you go: A moral imperative.
That’s why it’s one of my ‘3 questions’.
Answer incorrectly about the Law of the Land and I snuff the life out of the suspected traitor.
This article is wrong. Giving room to more regional cultural differences is why we have states. People who want to be insane can live in Oregon and California while sane people can live in Texas or some such. The problem is trying to make the US a global power requires a conformity of effort if not a uniformity of will. Stop trying to run the world, give power back to the states, guarantee them a Republican form of government[ without fraud and without redistribution of wealth from producers to communists], close the border and expel the invaders and we the People can start to fix our own problems.
Multiculturalism ultimately killed America . Why would anyone care about the constitution if you view America as an economic zone instead of a nation? It’s just some old piece of paper.
You’d have to end all immigration until we fix the multiculturalism problem and even then it would be difficult to do.
The zips are already in the wire.
Well, I would say it's for the same reason we just stand about and watch the invasion of our nation across the southern border. It's obviously caused by a total lack of testosterone.. We're ALL transgender now... (spit)
From American Conservative commentary on
French Best-Seller: U.S. Is a ‘Nihilist Empire’
Questioning the pro-American Western orthodoxy is selling books in the Hexagon
“America, he concludes, is no longer a nation-state, but a nihilist empire, in constant revolt against its own past, with a ruling elite openly hostile to the country’s traditions. For France and the rest of the West to follow it invites disaster. Many conservative Americans will recognize truths in the diagnosis, while believing that the nihilism and the regime of lies (Putin’s own term to describe the American empire) can be defeated and their country turned around and revived. Todd does not. “
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Yup. The damn DOJ has let Joe Pedophile off on the charges of his having classified documents in his garage, but the bass turds are still wanting to lynch President Trump for the same accusations. We’ve got one of Fidel Castro’s butt boyz running the invasion of America by foreigners and the GOOBers are too shickenchit to impeach and deport the commie bass turd.
Yup. The damn DOJ has let Joe Pedophile off on the charges of his having classified documents in his garage, but the bass turds are still wanting to lynch President Trump for the same accusations. We’ve got one of Fidel Castro’s butt boyz running the invasion of America by foreigners and the GOOBers are too shickenchit to impeach and deport the commie bass turd.
Yup. The damn DOJ has let Joe Pedophile off on the charges of his having classified documents in his garage, but the bass turds are still wanting to lynch President Trump for the same accusations. We’ve got one of Fidel Castro’s butt boyz running the invasion of America by foreigners and the GOOBers are too shickenchit to impeach and deport the commie bass turd.
Protestant Christianity was central to the identity of the United States and the formation of its Constitution.”
I wrote a master’s thesis on this. Spot on. Not the ONLY portion of the identity but without which America would not have been founded.
Because the GOP’s elected to congress want it that way.
The premise is… should there be something restraining California from mass extermination of people who aren’t letting their kids be subject to pornography in elementary school.
There is definitely a role for The Constitution. To say the states are the ultimate authority is a frightening and deadly concept.
States are not democracies. They are mobocracies being ruled by population dense cities like NYC and San Fran. These cities drive representation at the federal level, policies and laws.
If you want this type of rule, please do allow unrestrained state administration.
The constitution is not about rights, it is about restrains and is our only protection from mobocracies. Essentially mobocracies from rat infested metropolitan areas.
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