What is constitutionalism?

When there is an actual dictionary definition for a term, I think the best practice is to use that definition. So, “constitutionalism” is adherence to a form of government based on an explicit constitution.

In most countries with a constitution-based government, the challenges come in what it means to “adhere.” Countries don’t want to be rewriting their constitution as major shifts in mores, culture, technology and such come about. It is up to the legislators to decide which of these shifts is to be respected enough to enact laws “consistent with” the nation’s constitution or for them to ratify an amendment to their constitution. What does it mean to be consistent with a constitution, though?

1. Strict adherence includes interpreting the statements in the constitution literally, despite changes in culture since the time of the signing of that document in interpreting each of the amendments (if there are any in a particular country) literally, as close to exactly as they were adopted. It acknowledges constitutional amendments. In the U.S., an example is that before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote, it was widely believed that “all men are created equal” did not mean that all women are created equal to men in terms of the right to vote. Strict adherence, then, required interpretation of court cases in a different context before and after that amendment passed.
2. Conservative adherence considers certain unavoidable changes in the interpretation of the constitution (including its amendments). For example, the U.S. does not have a constitutional amendment that makes clear what is constitutional regarding the use of technology, so conservative constitutional adherents have no choice but to draw analogies to conservative constitutional precedents in case decisions. Every effort is made to stay as close to a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as is practical or feasible. Of course, conservative interpretations do evolve over time. The interpretation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution for nearly 90 years allowed for “separate but equal” treatment of people of different races, including allowance of segregation. Of course, “separate” was rarely “equal.” But the dominant culture had its own interesting interpretation of “equal” that would eventually be seen as not at all equal. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Supreme Court voted unanimously in 1954 to overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 decision, which had ruled that state-sponsored segregation was just fine. A change in “enlightenment” had occurred in those 42 years.
3. Liberal adherence considers a constitution to be a living document that must pay attention to evolving notions of morality and temporal context, among other things (such as, in the past 50 years, the rapid changes in technology). Liberal adherents require much less lag time between previous interpretations and current interpretations of a country’s constitution. As an example, in the U.S., the sentiment of the majority of adults (as Millennials have come of age) has somewhat rapidly changed to insist that people with a variety of gender identities should have equal civil rights, including the right to a legal marriage-- independent of specific religious beliefs to the contrary. Liberal adherents on the Supreme Court readily saw this moral revelation as a valid interpretation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal. What has been interesting to witness is that at least one somewhat conservative justice saw this too— that this is a fundamental and literal interpretation of all people being created equal with certain inalienable rights.

Even nations that do not have a government based on an explicit constitution (e.g., Israel) have to deal with the degree and pace at which their nation will support changes in interpretation.  A country that is governed by religious teachings, for example, also has to make ongoing decisions about contemporary interpretations of their oral traditions and any religious documents that are part of their religious culture— the Talmud, the Q’uran, the Bible, the Vedas, the Tripitakas and Sutras, etc. As we are currently experiencing with radical Islam, a “nation” that is defined by a fundamentalist “strict adherence” caliphate means interpreting the Q’uran as the leaders imagine it would have been interpreted in the 600s C.E.

From these examples, it's easy to see that what constitutes "constitutionalism" is in the eye of the beholder.

Turning Anger into More Effective Action

So many of us are outraged at the way Blacks are treated by the American judicial system, by our public safety departments, and by any individual who stands by and does nothing to change this massive American cancer of discrimination. I’m angry and feeling powerless to bring about a change that has not occurred in the centuries since the first black people were brought to Virginia as slaves in 1619. It is the latter feeling that I must change in my heart and my actions.

Writing passionately about the problem has proven to be a waste of my time and words, except as a sane outlet for my anger. We are not powerless to bring about a tidal wave of change. But it will take all of us-- no matter our skin color or ancestry—to quell this 400-year deadly storm with the power that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us we have when we unite; when we pressure our federal, state and local government at the ballot box and in accountability for their (lack of) actions; and when we hold our courts accountable for their disparate treatment of black people.

Dr. King showed us that the path to change does not include murdering those who represent discriminatory institutions. The path does not include violent, destructive acts as an expression of determination or rage. Those actions simply reinforce a false stereotype and delay the time when this becomes a nation where all people are created equal and treated as such, a time when black lives finally matter.

Book Review: Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Literature-in-the-hyphen, with its characters who have culturally “hyphenated” identities, is now part of the mainstream American education curriculum, as well it should be. The best of such literature draws us in and offers us the opportunity to see the world with a culturally-distinct, binocular vision. The “-American” cultures that imbue these works with essential contextual nuance simultaneously serve as a stand-in for the overall American national cultural fabric. We are born into a culture that claims authority in the person of our family and we are propelled into a stereotype of a national culture that demands adoption.

Native Speaker’s first-person narrator, Henry Park, is the roughly-woven protagonist. The warp and woof of first-generation immigrants can initially produce a somewhat uneven intertwining. The threads of Park’s life tug against each other in ways that leave his blended fabric an awkward fit.

Park’s parents immigrated to the U.S. yet live within their more comfortable cultural community as Koreans first and as Korean-Americans second. His father’s strict adherence to the authoritarian ways of Korean families abrades Park’s developing mixed cultural identity. His resentment of his family’s preservation of Korean ways continues into Park’s adulthood when he feels the strain of his (attempted) adoption of American ways even more deeply. That contrast becomes more striking  with his marriage to an American-born white woman, Lelia. Their child, who has died before the story begins. The circumstances for this loss serve as a poignant trope for bigotry’s sometimes dire consequences. Lee sees that failure to support cultural and racial diversity causes serious rifts among its multicultural components-- rifts that are too often deadly. Henry and Lelia struggle in the wake of the loss of their much loved son. The question of whether their marriage has also died restates an ambivalence about cultural interweaving.  

Park-as-narrator is uncharacteristically open about his personality’s mismatch to the dominant American culture; his extreme reserve is ill-matched to the comparatively open and blunt styles of Americans (such as his wife). And while Park-as-narrator lays bare his wish, yet inability, to transform his personality to become more “American” (especially in his interpersonal relations), Park-as-character is an extraordinarily private man who operates in the dark shadows of a Korean (-American) underworld, working hard to reveal nothing about himself. He methodically adopts professional identities that serve his purpose, then discards them. But even in this, Park has great difficulty with the segregated dimensions of his identity. Again, there is danger-- even death-- if these distinct identities begin to integrate.

The integration of who we are is a challenge for all of us. As with all fine literature, Native Speaker speaks to this larger truth.

Freedom of Speech: us versus them

It was not that long ago that the U.S. electorate was not so polarized. There were very clear and significant differences between the two major political parties, but there was also an assumption that the job of an elected official was to understand other perspectives and to come up with solutions that edged the government closer to that elected official’s long-term goal while incorporating elements of “common ground” goals and negotiating compromises so that all parties would be able to support the resulting legislation.

This particular election cycle has become such a shouting match among certain candidates and voters that even if one wanted to understand diverse perspectives, those perspectives would be difficult to hear amidst the din of demonizing rhetoric.

Today, it appears to be to a politician’s advantage to demonize an opponent and even to instill fear in voters. Inspiring fear pays at the ballot box. Placing blame on anyone other than the voter pays too: Victims! Rise up against those who want to harm you! The psychological notion of “the other” has been at play in societies since before the time of human beings: What’s different and unfamiliar is to be feared. To maintain that fear in contemporary society we must focus on what is different, magnify the potential danger, and ignore all there is that is the same or quite similar. We now see those fears manifested within the populace as anger, echoing a few candidates’ visible, audible display of that emotion.

Because noticing differences is hardwired in our brains, it is the job of the society to remind us of what we have in common and why it’s in our best interest to cooperate (at least to some extent). When those with power in a society choose to fan fear-flames instead, “followers” instincts about fearing “the other” are magnified rather than tempered. Fight or flight? Follow the leader and fight against our fellow citizens. Winner take all.

In the U.S. mythology, people are entitled to their points of view, to what they consider to be priorities, to how they make decisions (through religion, science, deductive logic, emotional appeal, conspiracy theories, simple adoption of the opinions of others, a coin toss). But we also— consciously or not— believe that we are entitled to judge others’ views, priorities, and decision-making processes from within our own value system and approaches to problem-defining and -solving. This amounts to believing that (other) people are “entitled” to have “ignorant, un-American” opinions based on “lies.” While this kind of judgment takes a certain amount of hubris in many situations, it’s nearly impossible to avoid judging another’s opinions against our own hardened beliefs.

How far can we realistically be expected to bend in respecting someone else’s point of view? Even if we philosophically believe that others are entitled to believe what they believe, I think there are limits that most of us still have beyond which we simply can’t respect that person’s beliefs. And if we are convinced that all hope will be lost if another’s beliefs prevail, a certain desperation takes hold that leads to not even believing someone else is entitled to express those beliefs.

Ideally, we would neither shrug our shoulders and say, “You’re entitled to believe whatever you want” (then walk away) nor become enraged and say, “Believe what I believe because you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.” We’d insist on sitting together, without rage, and “seek first to understand then to be understood.” But you know what? People actually have gotten angry with me for suggesting that rage isn’t our best option as a society right now and claim that listening to someone with another point of view will just magnify their rage-- as if they have no control over their own emotional responses.

Because we all know that yelling at someone and making highly derogatory characterizations of him/her is not a convincing way to get that person to embrace different beliefs, it is clear to me that, right now, there is no desire to actually convince anyone to change their beliefs. I guess we're entitled to work that hard to prevent consensus, but from my perspective it's difficult to accept that we can't do better, perhaps quelling that din and dampening those flames with the goal of bringing that U.S. myth closer to reality.  

On Mother’s Day May 8, 2016

Sitting on my bed with you

  Discussing why-we-are-here.

You, so certain.

I, less so.

Your personal convictions are your religion

   Along with your smorgasbord version of

   Catholicism.

I am here, you say,

   To leave this world just a little bit better

      By being kind,

      By listening to those who need to be understood,

      By refraining from judging others…

Even though I might worry about

   The path they are taking,

      Where they might be lost,

   Their inner struggles,

   Their outward trials.

I listened. I tucked your convictions

   Away in my heart, Mom.

And I try—oh I try!

   To be this kind of woman,

   This kind of mother.

  

   

Camellia sinensis

A day dawns.
The aroma of steeping Assam
Raises my sense of peace
At the start of the day.

Astringent, assertive,
Bold, beautiful,
Citrussy...
Compared with Ceylon?

There is an inspiration
In black teas.
They launch us into the day
Without the insistence of
Black coffee…
But an insistence nonetheless.

Literary Noise in the Twenty-First Century

I recently read again Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. This is a novel (or collection of short stories, however you want to label it) that had a profound impact on revered 20^th-century writers such as Hemingway and Faulkner. Literary critics say that this book evolved (I won’t go so far as to say “revolutionized”) literary fiction and, in so doing, inspired other American authors, in particular, to adopt and adapt Anderson's contribution in their own writing.

What does this have to do with “literary noise”?

There is very little literary noise in Anderson’s novel, if you forgive the propensity of prior literary generations in using way more adjectives and adverbs than we are “supposed” to use today. In the intervening decades since Anderson’s book was published, we have moved to worshiping “show don’t tell” in literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Some editors even state that the adverb is or should be dead in literary fiction and that adjectives and adverbs should be replaced by evocative descriptions of what characters are doing, implying what the adjective would have declared.

With the human predilection to believe that if some is good, more is better, we now find writing that is so stripped of modifiers that it requires long passages just to get at what the characters are doing or what can be expressed viscerally about the scene.

"Moderation in all things" would urge that neither the use of modifiers nor of passages that replace them be used to an extreme. I believe the writer needs further latitude. In some stories and styles, multi-paragraph scene descriptions evoke and even reinforce the actions and feelings of the characters.  In Anderson's novel, the colors and weather conditions even substitute for direct descriptions and statements of characters' thoughts and feelings. For me, this is what makes a novel rich and aesthetically pleasing. It is not evocative writing in the minimalist-description sense but in the somewhat indirect way it speaks to the reader. It also, I believe, enhances. 

However, I know avid readers who pass over or skim these passages to get back to the "action." For them, all but action is noise that interferes and stalls the momentum of the story. 

In literature, is what constitutes noise only in the eye of the beholder?