I kind of half-watched Charlie Rose’s interview last night with Antonin Scalia. Basically, Scalia explained his way of interpreting the Constitution, which he calls ‘Originalism’. Broken down to brass tacks, Originalism is an effort to interpret what the Constitution meant to the people that wrote it when they wrote it. I obviously think this is a moronically self-restricting way to interpret the Constitution but it has one merit. It pays a lot of attention to what the Founding Fathers had to say about things. And, if there is one really serious shortcoming of the Democratic Party, it is its failure to utilize the wisdom of the Founding Fathers when it goes about justifying its policies.
I don’t want a kind of Lockean form of Shari’a Law or anything. I don’t want people to cite the Founding Fathers chapter and verse to justify what they do, but I want people to understand much better than they do now why the Founding Fathers set up our system of government the way they set it up. When I read tripe like Jeff Stein’s article on Europeans’ tolerance for a surveillance state it makes me want to grab him by the lapels and ask him if he’s ever read Tom Paine. This country was founded on getting away from Princes and Kings and their ‘official religions’. This country rebelled against the censoring of our mail and press, the compulsory stationing of troops in our homes, and against arbitrary arrest and sham trials. We are not like Europe for a reason. When it comes to liberty, we should never look to Europe and say ‘Look, they have less of it than we do, what’s our problem?’
This is basic.
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered…staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” -George Washington
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” -John Adams
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” -Thomas Paine
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” -Thomas Jefferson
“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.” -Samuel Adams
This is the American creed, and it should shock no one that it isn’t as deeply embedded in European culture. Right now, I wish the Democratic Party would engage in a little Originalism in protecting our privacy rights.
