Human Rights Campaign President Calls For Rejection Of "The Little Piece Of Paper" Of The Founders
We have been discussing Democratic leaders and activists who have been calling for revolutionary change and a rejection of the foundation of the American constitutional system. The latest is Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson, who spoke at the National Democratic Convention. In an earlier speech, Robinson rejected what she referred to as Founders’ “little piece of paper” and called for reimagining our constitutional system.
The voices calling for radical change have been growing for years, including among law professors and legal commentators.
Viewers now get a steady diet of figures like MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal who called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it.
In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks went on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” to lash out at Americans becoming “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country.
I was recently called for a response to Robinson’s call. Yet, it is not clear if Robinson is speaking about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as that “little piece of paper.” However, she insists that “[i]n this moment, we’ve got to reimagine it with people that look and love like us at the center.”
Robinson added:
“And I think for us right now is about reimagining freedom and this American story in a way that is more revolutionary than what our Founders actually put down on that little piece of paper, but instead is the type of democracy that is by and for all of the people in this country. That’s the opportunity that we have.”
Her comments did include positive views of the progress made under the current system:
“The story of America is the story of progress towards freedom. In just a few generations, my family went from being enslaved in Mississippi to the first free Black family in Muscatine, Iowa, to preparing to elect President Kamala Harris. Progress is happening my friends!”
As someone who has supported LGBT rights for over four decades, I have nothing but admiration for those who fight for equal rights for everyone to be able to live their lives according to their own values and associations.
However, a radical “reimagining” our constitutional system is a popular and growing call on the left. It is often left vague in terms of what such a reimagination would entail, but suggests structural, not just policy, changes.
If the “little piece of paper” is a reference to the Madisonian constitution, it is a “type of democracy” that has proven the oldest and most successful constitutional system in the history of the world. It has survived precisely because it was designed for the most pluralistic nation in the world. It allows for tremendous social and political changes but does so within a framework that protects individual rights.
Before we start “reimagining” our way out of the most stable constitutional system in history, we may want to consider how the alternatives have been faring around the world.
It is that “little piece of paper” that introduced a revolutionary concept of governance that permits a nation of rivaling factions and values to govern as one. That does not mean that we do not have deep and at times bitter divisions. However, we are joined in a common article of faith in the Constitution.
While he spoke more generally about democracy in general, Churchill’s famous comment could as easily refer to the Madisonian system: it may be “the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”