Why do we have constitutions, anyway?  Are we merely paying reverence to the opinions of dead men?  No.  The point of a constitution is not that the people who wrote it are necessarily wiser than we are, but that (a) we wish to be ruled by known laws, rather than by the fleeting whims of those who hold power at the moment, and (b) the fundamental design which limits the laws should be much harder to change than the laws themselves.

Constitutions shouldn’t be impossible to change:  That’s why there are procedures for constitutional amendments.  But change should be difficult.  If the constitution is treated as a “living document” the meaning of which can shift and flow in the light of “evolving standards,” then it is no longer functioning as a constitution, and there is no reason to keep it.

On the other hand, written constitutions pose a different kind of problem.  Since they are viewed as a kind of law, they tend to be interpreted by courts, and since they are viewed as a higher kind of law, courts suffer prodigious temptations to act as superlegislatures -- destroying the constitutional scheme in the very name of saving it.

Although the Framers of the U.S. Constitution were unusually talented men, they were naive about this possibility, assuming that the judiciary would be the weakest branch of government, and the legislature the strongest.  They would be dismayed and confounded by the extent to which Congress has ceded its authority to the courts and the executive.

Tomorrow:  That Makes Everything Okay

I have been reading some of the work of the late radical behaviorist B.F. Skinner.  Skinner, who denied free will, seems to have drawn some of the implications of his position – but it seems to me that he stopped short.  Read the following remarks, from his autobiography and to the interviewer Alfie Kohn, and see whether you agree.

“I am often asked, ‘Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?’  The answer is yes.  So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting.”

“During the ‘Dark Year’ in Scranton, I began to write notes about intellectual suicide .... I did not consider actual suicide; behaviorism offered me another way out:  It was not I but my history that had failed.”

“I have continued to seek relief from the effects of punitive consequences in the same way.  I have learned to accept my mistakes by referring them to a personal history which was not of my making and could not be changed.”

“When I finished Beyond Freedom and Dignity, I had a very strange feeling that I hadn’t even written the book.  Now I don’t mean this in the sense in which people have claimed that alter egos have written books for them and so on, but this just naturally came out of my behavior and not because of anything called a ‘me’ or an ‘I’ inside.”

“If I am right about human behavior, I have written the autobiography of a nonperson.”

“I can now take all of my faults and all of my achievements and turn them over to my history, and the point I make is that when I die personally, it won’t make a bit of difference.  Because there’s nothing here, you see, that matters.”

“I never think much about dying.  I have no fear of death .... The only thing I fear is not finishing my work.  There are things I still want to say.”

Having once thought much the same way myself when I was a young man, I am in no position to be snarky.  But isn’t it self-defeating to say “I don’t have an I”?  If the speaker doesn’t have an “I,” then who is denying it?  If nobody is denying it, then has it really been denied?  If the self who seems to deny it is an illusion, then who is suffering the illusion?

And by the way, if this nonperson isn’t worried about his extinction, then why does he worry about the extinction of his work?  For since the rest of us are nonpersons too, there will be no one to appreciate or understand it.

Tomorrow:  Opinions of Dead Men

Mondays are student letter days.

Query:

My friend defines his entire moral code by the statement, "As long as I am not directly hurting anyone other than me, then nothing that I do is wrong.”  What do you think?

Reply:

C. S. Lewis remarked that the inventors of "new moralities" don’t really invent new moralities.  They merely accept the bits of the old morality that they like, and ignore the bits of the old morality that they don’t like.  For example, an extreme nationalist accepts the parts about our duty to kin but ignores the parts about all men being brothers, and an extreme socialist accepts the parts about our duty to relieve suffering but ignores the parts about justice and good faith.  Your friend is doing much the same thing, for the duty to avoid unnecessary harm to others is a genuine part of the moral law.  His problem isn’t that it’s wrong; his problem is that he ignores all the other parts.

The first problem with throwing out every duty but the avoidance of harm is that it will make him flat.  We were made to serve God, not just ourselves.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, we are “not our own beginning, not the masters of adversity, not our own last end.”  By casting aside our greatest duty, your friend is also casting aside our greatest joy and privilege.

The second problem with his way of life is that it will make him selfish.  What would he think of a man who had never lifted a finger to protect his wife, but bragged that he had never beaten her?  Of a man who failed to sound the fire alarm, but boasted that he hadn’t set the fire?  How about a teacher who had never taught his students a single truth, but preened himself on the fact that he had never taught them a lie?  Frankly, I don’t believe that your friend would admire such people any more than you would.  But by claiming that his only duty is to avoid unnecessary harm to others, he is training himself to be just like them.

The third problem with your friend’s narrow-mindedness is that it will make him stupid.  If the only duty he recognizes is not harming others, he won’t have the foggiest idea of what harming others means.  This is already happening in the way he limits harm to direct harm, then limits it further to "hurt," to physical harm.  Suppose that through reckless driving I were to get myself killed, leaving my wife a widow.  Would the fact that the harm of widowhood was indirect make it small? Suppose that I were to corrupt a young female student by seducing her.  Would the fact that the harm of corruption was nonphysical make it trivial?  We see that every moral duty depends on the other moral duties to flesh it out and complete its meaning.  By keeping one duty but throwing out the others, in the end your friend won’t even understand the one that he keeps.

The slogan "It can’t be wrong if it doesn’t hurt anyone" first became popular as a rationalization for sex outside marriage.  That was two generations ago. Now, after tens of millions of abortions, divorces, fatherless children, sterilization-inducing diseases and broken hearts, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the meaning of "hurt."  I don’t know what your friend hopes to justify, but you can be sure he is looking for a way to justify something he really knows is wrong.

Tomorrow:  Disbelieve in Me

If any be a devout lover of God, let him partake with gladness from this fair and radiant feast.

If any be a faithful servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord.

If any have wearied himself with fasting, let him now enjoy his reward.

If any have labored from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due.

If any have come after the third, let him celebrate the feast with thankfulness.

If any have come after the sixth, let him not be in doubt, for he will suffer no loss.

If any have delayed until the ninth, let him not hesitate but draw near.

If any have arrived only at the eleventh, let him not be afraid because he comes so late.

For the Master is generous and accepts the last even as the first.

He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour in the same was as him who has labored from the first.

-- St. John Chrysostom, Paschal Homily

Tomorrow:  “It Doesn’t Hurt Anyone”

Once upon a time I was approached by a grad student who said he had been thinking about God.  This worried him, because he had never thought about God before.

He said, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

I answered, "No."

He was relieved.

I asked him what had got him started.  It turned out that for months he had been devouring the works of contemporary ethical and political theorists.

He explained, "None of these writers says anything about Him.  It seems to me they're building their theories on nothing."

That’s it.  That was his entire reason for beginning to think about God.

All these authors had made him think of God not because they spoke of Him, but because they didn’t.  God had manifested Himself by the very fact of His apparent absence.

Tomorrow:  Even Now!  Even Now!