Neanderpundit

I’ve been trying to read the (I’m told) excellent essay at Frances Poretto about Constitutional order.

In as much as I’m sure this is important in any number of ways, I’ve made multiple attempts at understanding it, each of which leaves me drooling with a bad case of keyboard face.

I completely get that I should have a good and solid understanding of the constitution, it’s principles, it’s importance to each and every one of us, but I don’t. Well, maybe I understand it better than some, but not as well as many.

Why? I don’t think I need to. Any number of people can make the case that I do need to, but I look at the Constitution exactly as I look at the inner workings of a television, or video camera, or an automobile engine.

I know that I could attempt to understand all those things, and I am sure that I am smart enough to do so, eventually. What would be the point? I know that better and brighter people than myself have made those things (televisions, cars, constitutions) and that they work.

A television works, and all I need to know about it is what channel to tune to to get BBC-tv. My car functions, and while I take better care of it than most, I don’t need to have an intimate knowledge of how the Electronic ignition control maximizes the fuel/air mixture for best efficiency. I just turn the key and go.

Likewise, the Constitution of the United States is a functional device, whole and capable. In and of itself it wits not, it relies on those who apply and enforce it. The application is like the gasoline, or radio wave, if you will, and the enforcement is the TV picture we see, or the destination we arrive at.

Maybe that’s a crappy analogy, but it’s close enough for the point I’m trying to make.

The constitution, like a TV or a car, can take you a long way- if it breaks down because of bad application and it results in bad enforcement, it must be repaired; and like anything, the repair must begin with the determination of the validity of the application.

The document, the concept, itself, is more or less inviolate, and has proven itself so in the last couple of hundred years. Bad application and enforcement has taken it’s toll. WHo is the Mister Goodwrench we’ll call to fix it? I don’t want to know how or why it’s broke or how to fix it, I want it running properly again, so I can see “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”

I’ve been reading Velociworld for quite some time now. The Vman rocks; he’s like Lileks without the mac stupidity or the obsessive compulsive need to kidblog. Ever hear the new Hummer ad?

“The 72 inch bed in my new Hummer h3 is big enough, even with the tailgate closed, to take something just about your size into the middle of nowhere. Get that? the middle of NOWHERE. What time will my firstborn be home?”
“Nine Thirty”
“Perfect”

I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s Vman.

if he’s not a daily read in your household, you should change that today.

Oh, and go vote for him in the Whizbang Blogawards.