Today [September 17] is Constitution Day in America. The federal holiday (technically Constitution Day and Citizenship Day) commemorates the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. The 2004 law that established it requires all taxpayer-funded educational institutions to provide lessons on the Constitution on that day.
However, learning cannot be legislated into existence. Two decades later, the Constitution is as misunderstood by the American public as ever. The education establishment bears a big part of the blame for this plight. But another culprit is mainstream media.
Political Football or Romantic Relic?
Journalists, pundits, and politicians treat the Constitution as little more than a political football. In newspapers, on news shows, and online, the overriding concern is whether and how the document can be leveraged to advance the policy agenda of one political faction or another.
Constitutional scholars and educators are more often “above the fray.” But their treatment of the Constitution just breeds public misunderstanding in a different way. In classrooms, textbooks, museum exhibits, documentaries, and mass-market history books, discussions of the meaning of the Constitution are usually either vague or wrong. The “Constitution education complex” reveres the document as a national treasure and commemorates its framing, signing, and ratification as the triumphant conclusion of the Revolution and the Founding: America’s epic origin story. But it glosses over so much that even today’s Constitution-loving patriots perceive the piece of parchment as little more than a romantic relic.
What both the education establishment and mainstream media almost always omit from their discussions of the Constitution is a clear and correct explanation of its philosophy. It is necessary to understand the Constitution as a work of philosophy in order to correctly interpret what it says as the law of the land and fully appreciate why it is a national treasure. Without that grounding, journalistic discourse is doomed to devolve into “political football” bickering, and scholarly explorations are bound to meander into “romantic relic” territory.
Hellbound and Down 