My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does. I say constitution by what the word used to mean, not in the way that it means nothing, as it does today. Let me explain.
Constitution comes from the root constitute. As in made of. Formed from. If a woman is pregnant, and the pregnancy weakens her constitution, then it took a lot out of her. It made what she was made of less durable. It made her less her. A constitution for a country is what the country is made of. The stuff it’s formed from. The principles it stands for. In the case of the United States of America, it was made of a set of principles. The document that we call The Declaration of Independence, the precursor to the “constitution” of the United States of America, says as much in its first few lines. “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” In modern language, “This is the stuff our country will be made of, formed from, stand for. The following principles will define our country.”
Nowadays, principles or truths, the kinds we might hold to be self-evident, are out of style. Truth is relative. My truth is my truth and your truth is yours. We now live in a society that thinks the word opinion is a synonym for the word truth, a society without any constitution.
My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does, because the constitution of my country is now to specifically have no constitution. It’s not made up of anything. It doesn’t stand for anything except for specifically not standing for something. A society where relativism is the key ingredient is a society headed for disaster. A society that holds no truths to be self-evident and all truth to be subjective will be a society subject to one self, evidently, and that’s the truth. To put it another way, tyranny will undoubtedly occur when a country has no truths to stand behind, no truths to band together and defend, and tyranny is where this country is rapidly headed.
My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does, because what used to be the “constitution,” the document that was “ordained and established for the United States of America” used to be ordained and established by “We the People,” but is now ordained and established by, “we, the people who work in the three branches of government,” and yes there is a big difference. We have become a society full of people proud to disassociate themselves with the principles that this nation was founded on, people who renounce the ideas of the founding fathers because they were men, or white, or owned land, or lived 200 years ago so couldn’t possibly have known what they were talking about. What these men actually said never makes an appearance in our society; only their appearance makes an appearance.
My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does, because what used to be its constitution, what it used to stand for, what it used to be made of, has been sacrificed on the altar of self gratification, the altar of rights without responsibilities. Constitution used to mean, “the things that we all are responsible for upholding,” but now means, “the things which no one is responsible for corrupting.”
My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does, because we no longer form our country, we are formed by our country. We no longer tell our government how best to serve us, our government tells us how best to serve them.
My country used to stand for, used to be formed by, used to be made of, the idea of protecting the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My country used to stand for, used to be formed by, used to be made of, the idea that people could govern themselves and wrote seven articles and twenty-seven amendments to explain how it could be done. My country used to have a constitution, but sadly it no longer does. My country now has three old pieces of paper scribbled on by old men with old ideas and old things called truths which they thought existed, but, evidently, don’t.
I’d like to save my country. I’d like my country to have a constitution once more.