Utterly Defenseless Against Itself

by Thomas A. Droleskey

As I have written on many occasions in the past fifteen years or so, and many times on this site and in Restoring Christ as the King of All Nations, the Constitution of the United States of America is defenseless against efforts on the part of legal positivists, moral relativists or craven merchants of raw political power to deconstruct the meaning of its plain words to suit their own nefarious, expedient purposes. That is, a document that admits of no higher authority than the text of its own words becomes as susceptible to manipulation and misinterpretation as the Bible itself does when one rejects the fact that we have an authoritative guide for the interpretation of Holy Writ, the Catholic Church. It is much easier to deconstruct and to distort a document written by mere men once it is accepted that the Word of God has no ultimate authority on this earth to guide men in the meaning of what God has revealed therein.

The men who framed the Constitution of the United States of America were products of the Protestant Revolt and of the so-called Age of Reason (or Enlightenment). They accepted without question the belief that it was possible for men of divergent religious beliefs–or the lack thereof–to work together reasonably for the common good without referencing any one church as the foundation of a country’s civil order. They believed further in the heresy of semi-Pelagianism, which contends that men have enough inherent grace in themselves to be good, that we do not need belief, in access to or cooperation with sanctifying grace to be virtuous. The framers of the Constitution believed that men of “civic virtue” would present themselves for public service and would, after a long process of compromise, negotiation and bargaining amongst the diverse interests and opinions represented in the United States Congress, make decisions that redounded to the common good (see, for example, James Madison, The Federalist, Numbers 10 and 51).

James Madison himself quite specifically believed that there was no one “opinion” that could unite men of such divergent backgrounds as found themselves in the United States of America at the end of the Eighteenth Century. Thus, a dialectical process of conflict amongst divergent interests (religious, sectional, economic, occupational) had to be created to force those who took positions that constituted a majority “view” at any time to at least consider the viewpoints of those who were in the minority of a given issue. In this way, Madison reasoned, whatever majorities emerged in Congress on any piece of legislation would be transient, indigenous to one particular issue at one particular time, and sensitive to and concerned about the rights of those who disagreed with them. Such a system, which was premised on the exercise of statesmanship on the part of those elected to serve in Congress and as President, would create the “extended commercial republic” where no one person or interest could predominate on all issues at all times.

The institutional arrangements created to effect this “extended commercial republic” were very complex. A division of powers between the central government and the state governments (Federalism). A separation of powers amongst the three branches of the central government involving a number of checks and balances. Different powers given to each of the two chambers of the Congress (bi-cameralism). Staggered elections for the members of the United States Senate, a body whose members were elected by state legislatures until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Popular election originally of only one body, the House of Representatives. A President elected by electors appointed by whatever method deemed best by state legislatures. All of this was supposed to produce a tension that resulted in internal safeguards to prevent, although not absolute make impossible, the abuse of power and the rise of the tyranny of the majority.

There is only one little problem with this schemata: it was premised on the belief that matters of civil governance do not have to be founded in a reliance on the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted to His true Church and that the Church herself has no role to play to serve as the ultimate, divinely-instituted check on the abuse of temporal governmental power. It was difficult enough for the Church at times during the Middle Ages, when she exercised the Social Reign of Christ the King, to restrain certain rulers. It is impossible for any purely human institution to restrain the vagaries of fallen human nature over the course of time. Men who are not mindful of their First Cause and their Last End as He has revealed Himself solely through His true Church will descend to their lower natures sooner rather than later.

This is what happened in short order following the ratification of the Constitution. Political parties arose during President George Washington’s tenure in office. Although Washington himself abhorred the rise of political parties and saw the dangers that would threaten national order if professional, career politicians emerged as a caste undo themselves, he was powerless to stop them from forming and taking over the entirety of the governmental process. Although the names of the political parties have changed over the last two hundred ten years, the partisan political divisions that developed during the Washington Administration have come to define the very nature of American electoral politics and the making of public policy. What is best for a particular political party is best for the nation. So much for the pursuit of the common good.

The era of “Jacksonian Democracy” from 1828 to 1836 spelled the death-knell for the founders’ hopes that the Constitution itself would serve as a safeguard against the dangers posed by raw majoritarianism, the essence of Andrew Jackson’s political beliefs, which were derived from the American Revolution’s foreign cousin, the French Revolution. All notion of a political system that restrained the exercise of raw political power was pure mythology from Jackson’s time forward. Abraham Lincoln had little regard for Constitutional restraints. Woodrow Wilson, an Anglophile, believed that he was a Prime Minister entitled to reflexive support of the Congress. Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke every law imaginable to pursue his statist policies of the New Deal and the involvement of the United States in World War II. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush each have seen fit to make the Constitution suit their own purposes, sometimes by ignoring it entirely or by getting a compliant Supreme Court to ratify their abuses of power.

Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have justified the creation of so-called “independent regulatory agencies, which violate the principles of “separation of powers” by exercising each of three powers of government (legislative, executive, judicial), applied the provisions of the Bill of Rights, written to restrain the powers of the central government and not the state governments, to the state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process of law” clause, thereby expanding the power of the central government greatly, circumscribed the legitimate powers of the states to supervise their own elections, and have served as laboratories of rank social engineering by making it impossible to prevent the sale of contraceptives and to permit the execution of the innocent unborn by abortion and the elderly by means of the withdrawal of food and water and by “doctor-assisted suicide.” Most of the various people who have served as justices of the Supreme Court of the United States over the years have believed that the words of the Constitution represent either the ultimate authority pertaining to the exercise of governmental power or are so fungible as to admit of constant re-interpretation. Such is the inevitable, inexorable result of a country that rejects the belief that all civil law, whether exercised by a central government or state governments, must be subordinated in all things at all times to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law as those laws have been entrusted to and explicated by Holy Mother Church.

No level of government, whether central or state, has any authority to permit any action contrary to God’s law and thus injurious to the sanctification and salvation of the souls of its citizens. No mere human constitution is above God’s law. No mere human being has the right to decide for himself that he is exempt from the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Thus, those men, including the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America, no matter how well-intentioned, who believed that it is possible for “reasonable men” to pursue the “common good” absent a subordination of their lives and their work to Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church are bound to set their descendants on a downward spiral that will end only in the destruction of their nation or when said nation is converted to the true Faith.

Enter President George W. Bush.

According to a report on the Capitol Hill Blue website, President Bush became exasperated in November of this year when some Congressional Republicans questioned him about provisions of the “Patriot Act,” telling him that certain provisions were unconstitutional. Here is part of the report written by the website’s founder, Doug Thompson, and cleaned up of the expletives used by the President: “ ‘I don’t give a [phrase using God's name in vain],’ Bush retorted. ‘I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.’

“ ‘Mr. President,’ one aide in the meeting said. ‘There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.’

“ ‘Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,’ Bush screamed back. ‘It’s just a [blasphemous phrase] piece of paper!’

“I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution ‘a [blasphemous phrase] piece of paper.”

In a way, you see, President Bush is quite correct. The Constitution is just a piece of paper. It has no defense against hollow men who don’t even know the meaning of its words, no less care about subordinating their actions to the Deposit Faith Our Lord has entrusted to His true Church.

George W. Bush does not know one thing about the Constitution or The Federalist, and he does not care. Why should he? Even though he has twice taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, it is the actual, practical case that those who hold governmental power have the ability, albeit unjust, to distort the plain meaning of the words of the Constitution to suit their own purposes and to get away with it time and time again. A constitutional system that is not founded on the firm bedrock of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the rights of His true Church to govern men and nations in all that pertains to the sanctification and salvation of souls, thus having the ability as a final resort after the exercise of her indirect power of teaching and preaching to interpose herself and to nullify unjust laws and actions, is completely and totally defenseless against men who believe that their desires are totally consonant with God’s will and that anybody who questions them must be greeted with the use of God’s Holy Name in vain to end any and all questioning of them or their motives.

The irony here is inescapable: George W. Bush believes he is spreading “freedom” in Iraq. However, it does not matter to him if legitimate liberties are curbed in this country to permit the central government to expand its powers over private citizens, such as it turned he did in a special presidential order in 2002, to such an extent as to make Vladimir I. Lenin look like a member of the Libertarian Party. Absent his impeachment by Congress, which is most unlikely, President Bush will continue believing that he has absolute power to authorize things that are inimical to the common good and represent a diminution of actual human liberties, all the while doing nothing to make the country more secure at home, where the innocent unborn are put to death under cover of law every single day, or abroad, where we export abortifacient contraceptives in the name of “international family planning,” thus executing countless millions of babies around the world.

As a former colleague of mine from the Department of Political Science at Illinois State University, Dr. John A. Gueguen, Jr., noted in 1977 to another colleague who was enamored of the American founding, “The Constitution is the problem in this country.” I listened, not fully appreciating Dr. Gueguen’s wisdom at the time. I came to learn later why he was correct, that the Constitution leaves no room for Our Lord and His true Church. As the late, inimitable William C. Koneazny of the legendary Catholic Rendezvous events said to me in July of 1986, “The Constitution is evil. It doesn’t mention Christ.” Bill Koneazny was just as correct as John Gueguen has been nine years before.

Once again, it is important to turn to the wisdom of Pope Leo XIII. The words below, found in Immortale Dei, contain nothing other than Catholic truth:

“The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

“To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

“So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.”

There it is, once again. “To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error.” I will never tire of quoting this passage, especially to Catholics who are possessed of the Amercianist spirit and serve as apologists of the American founding while they spit arrogantly and defiantly in the face of the immutable Social Teaching of the Church that was explicated so clearly by Popes Pius Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, and Pius XI. The Constitution of the United States of America results inevitably in men such as George W. Bush, who turn out to have a contempt for the very document that is the product of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic errors of Modernity and has thus placed them in positions of civil power. The Social Reign of Christ the King has given us Saint Henry, Saint Edward the Confessor, Saint Stephen of Hungary, and the inestimable Saint Louis IX, King of France, among many others. History is on the side of the saints, not on the side of power-hungry sycophants who have a contempt even for the documents that made their rise to power possible.

Pope Benedict XVI has the power to stop all of this. One simple act will suffice: the consecration of Russia to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the world’s bishops. That’s all it will take. Alas, the Holy Father is himself a product of the tenor of Modernity, believing that the Second Vatican Council represented the Church’s “reconciliation” with the “principles of 1789,” which are very much related to the principles of 1776 and 1787. Nevertheless, we keep storming Heaven for a miracle, mindful that the Christmas Octave we are about to celebrate provides us with more opportunities to unite ourselves with the standard of Our Lord’s Holy Cross by uniting our prayers and sacrifices to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that was pierced with the sword of sorrow as she stood beneath that same Cross.

May we, resolving to rid ourselves of sin and vice in our own lives on a daily basis in cooperation with the graces we receive in the sacraments and by our reliance upon Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary, come to see the world more fully with each passing day through the eyes of the true Faith and thus help in some small way to plant the seeds for the only defense against the abuse of personal and civil power that exists, the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in men and nations.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Henry, pray for us.

Saint Edward the Confessor, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gregory Lalamont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us.

Saint John Neumann, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Peter Claver, pray for us.

Saint Marin de Porres, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us.

Saint Katherine Drexel, pray for us.

Saint Juan Diego, pray for us.

Blessed Junipero Serra, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

The Mexican Martyrs, pray for us.