@wandeljw,
One of the problems wande is that the Constitution is a religious document because, being a humanist composition, its language is removed from unself-conscious daily contexts and raised to the level of the sacred and the self-conscious activity of being recorded and thus given a religious significance and independence.
Doctrines and formulae receive a special life of their own when they are endowed with script (or scripture) and they are mediated and interpreted by a caste: priests, theologians, constitutional experts, lawyers etc. The ritual of abstract signs on paper takes over from the rituals, such as dances and ceremonies, of pre-literate societies.
Such things are born of a reverence for written language which takes an extreme form when assertions of no validity are dignified by being written down. Such reverence is encouraged by that class which is the guardian of the language and adheres to its members by association.
The US Constitution is merely an extension of the power of the written word which grew up in Europe hundreds of years previously when government came to be conducted by lawyers rather than by men of action. Every revolution is an overthrowing of such powers by men of action who then proceed to write their own constitutions. It is not a Holy Grail. Which does not mean it cannot be used as a Holy Grail by those who have a vested interest in doing so.
Reverence, or worship, of the "Book" and respect for its custodians is likely to be latent in the very discovery of writing. The Constitution has its own hierarchy which mimics the hierarchy of The Church. Authority is vested in those who interpret it. (Scribes).
There results the inevitable conflict, as in all Humanist doctrines, between
theory and
practice. Leaving aside the possibility that the doctrine may be invalid it is certainly the case that no language can cover unambiguously the contingencies of life. The absence of gesture is a major limitation. We see that on here with little cartoon faces attempting to remedy the deficiency. Maybe there were a few "eye-rollings" when it was written but they didn't make it onto the page.
Real life is far too complex to be captured by abstract signs on a piece of paper no matter how carefully drafted.
Once literary principles become worshipped a dilemma arises. A scholasticism develops and its seminar trained ministers build up an ever increasing set of elaborations in a vain attempt to keep up with rapid change, a Sysiphusian task, or the revered principles are treated as abstract slogans or dogmas whose applications are a matter of loose interpretation.
A further problem is that the words used in these slogans and dogmas are taken over from the complexities of daily life. They have a dual use which causes confusion.
The reality of daily life is, more or less, intractable,
Thus such Humanist productions are Platonic. That is they start from the corruption of the world and seek to find perfection in the realm of ideas. Such is anti-ID. There is something about reality which is beyond our reach. People often say--" it's all very well in theory..."
Max Weber found a certain correlation between theory and practice in the crucial importance of the Protestant religion, assuming it is lived up to by the faithful, in the transformation from the pre-industrial to the industrial in urban, trading populations. Obviously such an idea implies that modern science is an offspring of Christianity.
It is a great irony that the reverence for the written word, when it was strictly obeyed as Calvin insisted it should be, created a world in which the Word lost respect. Language destroys itself. We get Derrida and Linguistic Philosophy.
The point being that the Constitution is a religious document insisting upon the separation of religion and secular concerns. An absurdity.
It's a vast and complex area of study way beyond the ordinary person. The dispute here is simply one of a struggle for power between the High Priests of two religions. Two Books.
We are the poor bloody infantry I'm afraid.
