The Great Constitutional Separation

This post ought to be Civics 101 – high school stuff – but sometimes it does not hurt to remind ourselves of these things.

We hear so much about the “separation of church and state”, but as has been demonstrated, this phrase has come to mean something quite different than it did at the nation’s founding. There is, however, a separation that was designed into the Constitution that is little discussed – the separation of idea and power.

Let’s think about this for a minute. What was the bottom line problem with communism? Has not some form of communal living represented utopia for most religions? The problem was the IDEA of a communal society was enforced, that is to say granted POWER, without the consent of the people.

In monarchies, monarchs have power, in autocracies, autocrats have power, in a theocracy, the theocrats have the power — in democracy, the people have the power, as represented by their government. We have successfully divorced power in this country from individuals or even a small group of people.

Thus, ideas matter a lot here, for ideas are what can sweep through a people and have them wield their power in a given direction. The problem in this day and age is that we want to give the idea itself the power, and not leave the power in the hands of the people. Communism is the ultimate expression of this problem, but we see it in this society in things like government programs that Congress sets on some sort of bureacratic auto-pilot, for example the Superfund regs.

As ideas take hold, they institutionalize in an effort to consolidate and foster the power they generate. These institutions then begin to compete with each other, often by trying to crush debate and stamp out competing ideas. Thus the gulag in the Soviet Union, and the political correctness trends in this country. These institutions generally take the form of PAC’s, 527′s, think tanks, and non-profits.

But such institutions also become slaves to the power they seek to consolidate. For power to be meaningful, it must be used, and thus new power must be gathered, and so it goes in an endless cycle. Thus we find PETA, orginially conceived to fight genuine animal cruelty, beginning to place animals ahead of people.

The left fears religion, because they think religious institutions, that is to say churches, are simply institutions formed solely to consolidate the power available in religious ideas. But this belies a deep misunderstanding of the religious institution and their aims. While it is true, prior to the Reformation, the Church did serve as a power base, the Reformation recognized that such corrupted the church from its true mission and the nature of relgious institutions changed. They became not about power, but about the preservation of orthodoxy, and to provide adherents with a context in which to practice their faith.

Which leads me to my two primary points. The first is that the establishment clause of the Constitution serves not just the nation, but the church as well. You see, it serves as a barrier to the church, or churches, becoming once again entangled in the power struggles that led to the Reformation – it preserves the church’s primary mission.

The second is that if there is a “separation” clause in the consitution is to separate power from any single person, idea, or institution and leave it firmly planted in the hands of the people. Religion in general has long since learned it lesson about this, finding itself corrupted by the temptation to overcome this separation. What I’m wondering is, has the left learned the same lesson?

Some additional thoughts from Lowell: John’s post reminds me of a story I love from the Constitutional Convention. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who is generally recognized as the man who wrote the Preamble, purposefully changed the first words from â€œWe the people of the statesâ€ into â€œWe the people.â€ The revision is deeply significant, I think, because it makes clear that the Constitution’s power derives, not from any governmental or private institution, but from “the people” themselves. As Richard Brookhiser has said, Morris thus “created a phrase that would ring throughout American history.”

[tags]separation, Constitution, religion, church, idea, power, institution, Gouverneur Morris, Preamble, we the people [/tags]