We Held Those Truths
Progressive Sovereignty, Sacredness & the U. S. Constitution
by Alexander Riley
It is not uncommon to hear talk of the “sacredness” of the U.S. Constitution, even if such talk is not always clear as to how that descriptive is being defined. Even the opponents of such a view of the Constitution acknowledge, albeit with disapproval, how many Americans see the document in this light. As a Salon magazine writer put it in late 2020 (and one imagines while holding his nose and grimacing):
Americans view the U.S. Constitution and its framers with a reverence that is almost religious, as if it were a stone tablet delivered by Moses descending from Mt. Sinai. The Constitution’s perceived sacredness implies that it is only to be minimally and periodically amended, overseen by legal priests with exclusive knowledge of what should and should not be altered.
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Alexander T. Riley is a senior fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.
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