Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 18:28:45 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: The Constitutional Challenge By Charles R. Kesler
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http://www.claremont.org/precepts/302.cfm


The Constitutional Challenge

By Charles R. Kesler

The 21st century began last Tuesday, with the sickening impact of 
jetliners against steel, concrete, and glass. The century arrived 
nine months and 10 days late, but then politics doesn't always 
observe the calendar.

This is not the first century to begin with a terrorist attack. The 
last century commenced, as it were, with the destruction on February 
15, 1898, of the U.S. battleship Maine, moored in Havana harbor. More 
than two hundred Americans died in the blast. What we would now call 
state-sponsored terrorism was immediately suspected as the cause, and 
in less than three months the United States and the Empire of Spain 
were at war. Less than three months after that, the fighting was over 
and America had become a world power, disposing not only of Cuba but 
of the far-flung Hawaiian and Philippine islands.

Terrorism soon gave a bloodier hue to events, of course. The 20th 
century's peculiar barbarism began in 1914 when a terrorist 
assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
The sanguinary thread pulled by that assassin unraveled the states 
and nearly the civilization of Europe, unleashing routine mass 
slaughter and setting in motion the two tyrannical world-systems, 
Soviet Communism and Nazism, whose rise and fall would dominate the 
rest of the century's politics.

So we cannot yet discern the ultimate consequences of last week's 
attacks on New York and Washington. Whether the carnage piled up by 
the terrorists and by our attempts to stamp them out will exceed the 
appalling toll accumulated in the last century, we cannot tell. It is 
a grim supposition, however, that our enemies like to top themselves, 
and that among the terrible surprises they withhold, temporarily, are 
weapons biological, chemical, and nuclear. The coming century may be 
monstrous, indeed.

Most of us feel this new vulnerability. The country has not suffered 
such a calamitous sneak attack since Pearl Harbor. So many Americans 
have not died in combat on American soil since Antietam. During the 
Cold War we lived with the threat of nuclear attack, but the threat 
remained unconsummated and we had the perverse satisfaction of 
believing that, if worse came to worse, we'd be avenged almost 
instantly. But it is not justice or even vengeance for the hijackers 
to have willingly blown themselves up along with their victims.

Our enemies seem to have left us with a stark but simple choice: to 
kill them before they kill us. Although there is no denying the good 
sense in this advice, in the end it neglects too much the differences 
between us and them. "Why We Fight" is a question that a free people 
are compelled to answer not merely by invoking the imperatives of 
self-preservation but also by reminding themselves of their blessings 
and, correspondingly, their duties.

Chief among our blessings is the United States Constitution. Monday 
was Constitution Day, marking the 214th anniversary of the 
Constitution's signing and its transmission from the Philadelphia 
Convention to the U.S. Congress, whither it was sent to special 
ratifying conventions in each state.

As American anniversaries go, Constitution Day is a small one, not 
even an excuse for a long weekend. But after the savage attacks of 
last week, the Constitution suddenly seems more precious, its virtues 
heightened and brought closer to home. It is the nature of evil to be 
a sort of privation, a negation of what is good; and in reflecting on 
the Constitution's goodness we celebrate all those principles that 
our enemies hold in contempt.

Human dignity; the rule of law; the equal rights of men and women; 
limited government; separation of powers; the consent of the 
governed; due process of law; separation of church and state; freedom 
of speech and religion -- these are the glories of our constitutional 
order. To the tyrants who struck New York and Washington, however, 
these are a syllabus of errors.

The World Trade Towers and the Pentagon are symbols of America's 
commercial civilization and its military might -- the things that 
together used to be called "the arsenal of democracy." But they are 
not symbols of democracy per se.

One of the hijacked planes was apparently aimed for the White House. 
As symbols, the White House and the Capitol Building come close to 
the heart of American republicanism. Their destruction would have 
been a grievous, grievous blow -- but one from which the country 
would have recovered. After all, the British Army torched both 
buildings during the War of 1812 and America bounced back smartly.

Though aiming squarely for American democracy, the terrorists missed 
their target last week. You can shatter and implode a building, but 
you can't so easily destroy a Constitution.

Already we see the remarkable way in which the Constitution's spirit, 
far in advance of any legal proceedings, encourages Americans to 
restrain themselves and to rally around the rule of law -- hence, for 
example, the ubiquitous and welcome calls to respect the rights of 
law-abiding Muslim citizens and resident aliens. It's also a good 
sign that Americans are questioning the bureaucracy and loss of 
personal freedom threatened by some of the new security measures. A 
liberty-loving people should be spirited.

But the acid test of our Constitution's health will be the energy 
with which Americans are able to defend themselves and to subdue our 
enemies. In the 21st century as before, the Constitution gives us the 
tools. Will we be able to finish the job?


Charles R. Kesler is editor of the Claremont Review of Books.


All pages copyright © 2001 The Claremont Institute



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