Glenn Beck and the "Original Intent" Fallacy

Divining the intent of the Constitution’s framers through the use of extra-Constitutional sources has become a major part of the fringe-conservative position, as we can see in books such as David Barton’s Original Intent (5/e 2008), which examines the religious beliefs of dozens of Founding Fathers in an attempt to prove that the Constitution was never intended to restrict religious expression in the public sphere, and Larry Schweikart’s What Would the Founders Say, which tries to divine the Framer’s opinions on hot-button issues from environmental protection to health care. 

In both books, the original intent argument leads—as it must always led—to the uncritical amalgamation of opinions that we have been discussing. Inherent in the assertion that the Framer’s had an original intent is the assumption that they had the same intent—otherwise there would be no way to use it as an interpretive standard to begin with.     

In his just-released Being George Washington, Glenn Beck spends one chapter discussing the Federal Convention. He insists that “original intent was the only intent” and that we must (like George Washington) bind ourselves to the original purposes of the men who wrote the Constitution. In summing up the convention, Beck tries to put this the original purposes of the Constitution into four succinct statements, the first and last of which illustrate the fallacy of the original intent position more than my own analysis ever could:

(First Principle) The Constitution recognizes the existence of natural law. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson referred to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Natural law recognizes the existence of God and acknowledges that God established a natural order of things for this earth and the people of this earth.

(Fourth Principle) The Constitution was created on the assumption that America would function under a free-market economy, recognizing and protecting property rights. John Adams wrote: “All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of . . . protecting property.”[1]

            Both of these propositions give us a lot to argue about. It is not at all obvious, for example, that the Jeffersonian notion of “natural law” included a God that modern American Christians would recognize as such. As an Enlightenment Deist, Jefferson saw God as something like the sum total of the laws of nature rather than as a personal deity who interacted with the human race. Furthermore, neither Jefferson nor Adams would have even understood the term “free-market economy” as we understand it today. Jefferson in particular saw America as a primarily agrarian economy, and he viewed all kinds of financial markets with suspicion.

            Two facts, however, are beyond dispute: 1) that Jefferson did not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787; and 2) that Adams didn’t attend it either. At the time the two men were ministers to, respectively, France and England, and they knew only as much about the Constitution as they read in letters from home. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of Massachusetts (the source of the Adams quotation) are very different things than the U.S. Constitution, and there is no historically acceptable way to use the words found in one of them to support an originalist interpretation of the others. Such an interpretive strategy only makes sense if we assume absolutely ideological unity among the Founders, which is a really dumb thing to do.

I believe that “original intent” is a spectacularly bad standard for interpreting the supreme law of the land. I do not say this as an America-hating liberal who sees the Constitution as a “living, breathing document” that can mean anything that we want it to mean. I believe that we must interpret the Constitution according to the meaning of its words, with careful attention to how those words were used in their historical context. Words mean things, and those meanings matter. Where the Constitution is concerned, meanings matter very much; if the Constitution does not have fixed meanings, we do not live under the rule of law.

But interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning of its words—the jurisprudential standard known as “originalism”—is very different than interpreting it according to the intentions of its authors. Nobody has drawn this distinction more clearly than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who, though often cited as an exemplar of the Framer’s intent standard of interpretation, rejects that standard in no uncertain terms:

It is simply incompatible with democratic government, or indeed, even with fair government, to have the meaning of a law determined by what the lawgiver meant, rather than by what the lawgiver promulgated. That seems to me one step worse than the trick the emperor Nero was said to engage in: posting edicts high up on the pillars, so they could not be easily read. Government by unexpressed intent is similarly tyrannical. It is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver.”^[2]

The view of original intent propounded by the fringe conservatives is directly at odds with the democratic principles they espouse, the common sense they advocate, and even the Supreme Court Justice they revere. This difference between “original meaning” and “original intent” may seem slight, but it separates Scalia’s mainstream conservatism from that of the right-wing fringe. Scalia himself alluded to this distinction in a 1997 lecture at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. When asked whether or not he would consider scaling back the application of the Bill of Rights to the states through an originalist reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, he replied, “I am an originalist. I am a textualist. I am not a nut.”^[3]

            Unfortunately, many of those driving public opinion and government policy in the era of the Tea Party cannot say the same.

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[1] Beck, Being George Washington : the indispensable man, as you've never seen him: 240-44.

[2] Antonin Scalia and Amy Gutmann, A matter of interpretation : federal courts and the law : an essay, The University Center for Human Values series (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 17.

[3] Antonin Scalia, "On Interpreting the Constitution,"  http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/wl1997.htm.

I Am George Washington and So Can You: A Review of Glenn Beck's BEING GEORGE WASHINGTON

It has finally happened. Glenn Beck has written a whole book in which I can find nothing with which to disagree. Really. I find his newest offering—Being George Washington—to be perfectly innocuous. And what’s more, it is clear that Beck is trying to use his powers for good instead of evil. Gone is his usual stridence and arrogance. Here, he deals generously with those he disagrees with, and he genuinely tries to present George Washington as a suitable model for Americans of all political persuasions. 

That said, it isn't a very good book.

It is hard to say what kind of book this is trying to be. The text fits into three distinct genre categories, any one of which could have made for a promising book about George Washington. The three categories are:

Historical Fiction: About 60% of the book could best be described as a historical novel written on the 5th-8th grade reading level. This novel deals very unevenly with Washington's life, beginning with the French and Indian War and focusing principally on the American Revolution before jumping to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and and the Farewell Speech in 1796. I call this portion a novelization, rather than a biography, because the author goes frequently into the minds of the characters and pulls out thoughts and motivations that go well beyond what any biographer could surmise. Take the first sentence of the book: "The colonel's horse was terrified." It is the novelist, not the biographer, who knows what goes on in the mind of a character's horse.


There is nothing particularly objectionable about the novelization portion of the book, but neither is there anything remarkable. Much the same narrative could be found in any one of dozens of young adult versions of the George Washington story. 


Historical Analysis: A second component of the book--one not clearly delineated from the first--aims to analyze the significance of George Washington's life for the modern reader. Again, there is little to object to here. Most of the analysis fits within the general received wisdom about George Washington’s values: the importance of conviction, the need for fixed principles, an abiding belief in the justness of one's cause--that sort of thing. Much of this analysis comes in somewhat annoying grey boxes plopped in the middle of the novelization with titles like "Thinking Outside the Eighteenth-Century Box" and "What If He Had Been King?" 


Leadership Manual: Beck begins the book with the assertion that all Americans can "be George Washington," which is to say that everybody can, by studying Washington's leadership principles, be the kind of person that Washington was and make a positive difference in the world. To help us along, he pauses the novelized narrative every now and then to point out some aspect of Washington's leadership that we should strive to emulate. Once again, there is nothing earth shaking here--much the same ground has been covered in such books as George Washington on Leadership or George Washington's Leadership Lessons. From Beck, we learn that we should be on time, believe in God, be willing to compromise, and not sweat the small stuff. Pretty basic stuff, really, but its always nice to have reminders.

As I said, any one of these elements could have made for an interesting book. And there are probably ways that they could have been combined together coherently to create something unique and interesting. Beck and his team, however, have simply thrown them together haphazardly with no real thought about how to give coherence to this odd collection of Washingtonian bric-a-brac. Almost everything that the book does is done much better in other (and less expensive) volumes, and the whole thing feels like uncorrelated notes that have been hastily assembled and placed between cardboard covers in time to make a Christmas killing--which, in fact, it is. The credits for Being George Washington list six different people as writers and thirteen more as "contributors & researchers." Beck himself was simply the compiler of random bits of work that other people did. And it shows.

Ultimately, what this book shows us is that Glenn Beck has ceased to be a shrill ideological firebrand and become a factory. Being George Washington was not so much written as produced on an assembly line. "Glenn Beck" (tm) is simply the brand name that guarantees book sales. I fully expect that this franchise will expand--that, in the next few years, we will see similar books on Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, and the other Founding Fathers. And from there: cat food, salad dressing, and beer. The good news is that the world has little to fear from Glenn Beck in the future. The bad news is that we have nothing to learn from him either.

A Christian Nation, Except Where It Matters

“Self-righteous liberals tell us that Jesus had a heart for the poor, which is undeniable. But Jesus never directed that government be the agency used to help the poor. He was talking about charity proceeding from individuals and His church.”—Sean Hannity, Conservative Victory, p. 207

         Don’t get Sean Hannity started on the “Christian left.” Only a communist, or worse, would even suggest that Christ’s injunctions to take care of the poor and vulnerable had anything to do with government. Those who believe such nonsense, he concludes, “would do well to remember the scriptural commandments against stealing and coveting.” Taxing me to give food to a hungry person is a violation of two of the Ten Commandments. True religion is not about who you feed; it’s about whether or not we can post all ten commandments above our lockers.

         I have argued before that the contemporary Tea Party movement mixes and matches positions from the Founding era to create an ideological mishmash that any Founding Father would have seen (for different reasons) as ideologically incoherent. But the historical incoherence of the movement pales in comparison to the theological incoherence of trying to hold, simultaneously, that

1)    America is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles by Christian Founders who always intended that religion remain an important part of public life. Liberals who accept a false notion of “separation of church and state” are actually persecuting Christians and ignoring the Founders by trying to disallow prayers in public schools, nativity displays on municipal property, and public postings of the Ten Commandments.

2)    America has no business trying to use the government to feed hungry people, give shelter and clothing to the poor, or provide educational opportunities and health care to those who cannot afford it on their own. This is the responsibility of private charities and Churches. Jesus never said that the government was supposed to do these things.

Each of these propositions contains a hidden theological assumption that Christians must question before drinking the Hannity-Beck-Levin Kook Aid.

The first proposition—that America’s Christian heritage means that we must allow minor expressions of religion in the public square—dramatically overstates the importance of, well, minor expressions of religion. To listen to Hannity and others defend the right to post the Ten Commandments on a school wall, or to put up a crèche display at city hall, one would think that these were vital to the free exercise of religion—that Christians could screw up their salvation by failing to walk underneath the 3% of the Jewish Law represented by the Ten Commandments.

But guess what? Most Christians don’t post the Ten Commandments anywhere (they being Jewish laws and all). And most denominations believe that Christians can go to heaven even if they lived all their lives in towns that didn’t display nativity scenes on public property. These things really aren’t that important to the Christian tradition.

Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and all that stuff, however, is REALLY important to the Christian tradition. This was not an incidental component of Jesus’s earthly mission; it WAS his earthly mission, and He made it pretty clear that it is supposed to be our earthly mission as well.  

         But you say (if you happen to be Sean Hannity), Jesus still doesn’t say that we are supposed to use the GOVERNMENT to do all of this feeding and clothing and visiting. This is what they set up the Church to do.

         I have a hard time imagining that any adult could read the New Testament and think that it had anything to do with dividing responsibilities for the poor between Church and State—concepts that nobody at the time could have understood. An essential part of the Christian message is that societies have a responsibility to care for their most vulnerable members. We do not do this because it is spiritually ennobling for rich people to give their money to the poor; we do it because the poor and the vulnerable need taking care of. How we do this, really, is up to us, with the implication that the best way to take care of them is the way that takes care of them the best.

         What Hannity & Co. tell us (when they are talking about money) is that Jesus imagined a great divide between what the government is supposed to do (Rome, we presume, but possibly Judea) and what “His church” is supposed to do. Taking care of people is good, if individuals do it by themselves or through a Church, but bad if individuals band together and structure a government that does it. (This logic does not, of course, apply to moments of silence in public schools).

One of the core assumptions of democracy, however, is that people have a right to try to structure their government in way that supports their values. Both liberals and conservatives believe this, but they believe it about different things. Most liberals (like most moderates and most conservatives) believe that their government should reflect the values of charity and compassion—values that can be found in all religious traditions as well as in most forms of secular humanism. The shrillest voices from the extreme right, however, see these things as outside of the government’s purview. They prefer that we focus our religious attention on graduation prayers, crèche displays, and making sure that schools give equal time to the dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark.

Jesus actually had an expression for just such a worldview. It had to do with swallowing a camel.  

A Balanced Budget Amendment? Not for These Guys

The Balanced Budget Amendment didn’t even get out of the starting gate this term. The House of Representatives rejected it with a vote of 261 for to 165 against, 23 votes short of the 2/3 majority necessary to send a proposed Constitutional Amendment to the Senate. And—though I would not have said so a few years ago—I’m glad it failed.

I actually do think that balancing the federal budget would be a good idea most of the time, but not all of the time. Without sufficient safeguards, a Constitutional requirement for a balanced budget would limit America’s ability to respond to genuine emergencies (think: World War II) or no-brainer opportunities (think: Louisiana Purchase) that could not be anticipated by any rational budget process.

There are, of course, emergency safeguards built into most contemporary versions of the balanced budget amendment. The resolution voted on yesterday—H.J. Res. 2—allows for deficit spending with approval of a 3/5 supermajority in both houses. If the United States is engaged in a military conflict, a deficit can be approved by a simply majority. So there are safeguards in the resolution that would allow reasonable people to react to situations where deficit spending is the only rational choice.

But we are not dealing with reasonable people.

This, unfortunately, is the logical conclusion to draw from last summer’s debt-ceiling debate. This was an excellent preview of how our current leaders would respond to a genuine fiscal emergency. On the day before America was set to default on its debt obligations for the first time since the Revolutionary War, 161 members of the House of Representatives voted against raising the debt ceiling. And even now, months after the debate, the “Supercommittee” that was formed by the debt compromise is on the brink of failing and throwing the nation back into the same crisis we faced in July and August.

And why has every attempt at a debt compromise failed? Because nearly every Republican currently in Congress has signed a pledge to never raise taxes, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason. Tea Party (and Utah) Senator Mike Lee even argues in his (genuinely awful) book The Freedom Agenda, that any balanced budget amendment should require a Congressional Supermajority to increase taxes (72)—a provision that found its way into an earlier version of the rejected amendment. And this, ultimately, is why Americans should not trust the current Congress with a balanced budget amendment. They have made it abundantly clear that goal of balancing the budget is less important than the goal of reducing taxes.

No quickie-mart manager would seriously set out to balance a budget by declaring a moratorium on any increase in revenue, much less a pledge to reduce revenues by any means possible. The Chair of the House Budget Committee, on the other hand, seriously proposed a budget that would try to balance the budget with nearly 2 trillion dollars in tax cuts. Such uncritical belief in the power of tax cuts, as I have argued before, goes well beyond rational economic theory and becomes a belief in magic.   

Really balancing the budget will require real pain and real sacrifice on the part of all Americans—those who pay taxes and those who receive entitlements. Those who believe that they can pull it off one hand tied behind their backs are deluded. Let’s not change the Constitution to make their delusions permanent.