Postmodernism and the Democratic Party

I was in the middle of a discussion with a Leftist on the Constitution when the conversation turned to, apropos of nothing at all, Scooter Libby and whether or not he should have been convicted. I was flabbergasted, as the Scooter Libby affair, and Valerie Plame had no place in the discussion. But understanding the connection between Leftists and Postmodernists helps to explain why my erstwhile debating partner pulled this particular rhetorical trick at that juncture of the debate: I was winning. But what is postmodernism, and one of its offshoots, deconstructionism? For that you could do worse than to read the American Thinker today as Paul Jacobson gives the layman a quick overview of The Postmodern Party.

I will just quote this one passage, and then let you, dear reader, ponder the entire article by clicking above:

It would be hard to find a more perfect example of the fashionably foolish nonsense of postmodernist "deconstruction" and other putative postmodernist "thinking" than the utterly bogus, deceitful model of constitutional interpretation, so worshiped by "critical legal theory" proponents and their deluded Democrat janissaries, that says the U. S. Constitution is somehow a "living, breathing document." Read: the Constitution is a wax nose to be pummeled into any shape radical-left Democrats desire at the moment to advance their tyranny. Who says we can't know what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution? Those patriots were some of the most prolific writers in human history. Yes, there was some disagreement among them but vastly more agreement; otherwise, they wouldn't have bequeathed us our Constitution. Every one of them would surely be scandalized to learn that some citizens today imagine they know better than the founders themselves what they, the founders, meant.

The "living Constitution" theory is like playing a game that asks "What would James Madison and the other founders say if they were alive today?" But the answers to such a question say more about the one answering than they do about the Founders. Jacobson is correct that to find out what they intended, all one has to do is read what they wrote. Unlike sifting through an archaeological dig of an illiterate civilization, these men wrote much material for posterity explaining what they meant. But the founders also recognized that they were mortal men, prone to all of the failings that have plagued man from the start. So they also gave us a way to amend the Constitution should we see the need. That process, though difficult, has been successfully accomplished on twenty seven occasions, so it is not impossible. But Leftists, in their rush to create their own version of hell on earth can't be bothered with going through the hoops needed to get an amendment passed. Instead, they employ the notions of deconstructionism to make the Constitution say whatever the latest Leftist fad says it should say. 

Postmodernism needs to be rooted out of our culture and our politics. It is a childish way of thinking where something is so because the child wishes it to be so. It is an adolescent chafing at the hard rules of reality. But those hard rules, rightly understood and practiced, actually permit a great degree of freedom. Conversely, when one has no rules, one finds only tyranny. Postmodernism is the lazy man's approach to all problems, and we must find it within to return to rigorous thinking about reality as it is, if our country is to be saved.