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.
It’s a Big Club, and you ain’t in it.
He left out the essential elements of going from where we are to where we were as a people when the founders started this great nation. If we cannot restore respect for the rule of law, honesty, decency, and moral discipline? The nation will fall. This is a huge inflection point in our history, We must stand against the Great Evil that stalks mankind globally, or the USA will collapse and the World will collapse behind us.
Glen Beck is Mormon. I don't know the author of the article, but he is spot on.
https://theweek.com/articles/494806/supreme-court-last-protestant
When Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens retires, the court will be without a Protestant for the first time since its inception.
By The Week Staff
last updated January 08, 2015
My ad-repressing browser allows a tease from The Blaze before the popup requires choosing a "plan." Another form of paywall, so thanks for posting the bulk of the editorial.
The Constitution serves well enough, even now. It merely needs to be upheld, as it so often is from time to time. I'll take the US Constitution over any other, as a sampling of other governments' documents would easily show. This is why the American Left continues to fight AGAINST the US Constitution, even now.
I started off saying gurantneeing a republican form of government. States rights means observing the rights of the people within those states.
To the average US citizen, the Constitution conjures up vague notions of rights. But those vague notions go out the window if The Constitution gets in the way of voting themselves something.
Related:
Light Lamps 1 Signs Our Times
Original Broadcast Date: 1947.01.26
“Our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people, and it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.”
Regrettably, that is a philosophy as incompatible with today’s reality as it would have been in the days of Noah.
The J6 political prisoners are basically being held under Article 58.
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams
“Why Americans are no longer governed by the Constitution“
Decades and decades of CORRUPT politicians who have used their power (and OUR money) to reconfigure things so that we citizens serve the State instead of what our Founders intended.
Thanks for posting. All Freepers (even those of us who are boomercons) need to know the work of Auron MacIntyre.
Yes the signs of corruption communism and greed all the signs to make 1984 a reality and here we are.
Hey, where’s that UBI they promised us so I can get Uber to fetch me some eats while I watch my TikTok videos?
The Italian elite theorists, who DeMaistre may have been a predecessor to, may not tell you what you want to hear, but their analysis of what was to come, and what now is the case, seems spot on.
There was a time when this thread would have been a major thread that could go on for at least days.
John Adams warned of this many years ago: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
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