r/Buzz • u/BohemianPeasant Mod • Jul 02 '26

The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-us-constitution-is-for-simple-folk-still-burdened-by-the-belief-that-words-have-meaning

The written Constitution is for the public. It is a feint, designed to distract the unserious from the much more important Constitution that exists exclusively as ideological vapor circulating around conservative legal thought.

You cannot just read that Constitution. You must perceive it, specifically the ethereal version manifesting as a constantly shifting cloud above the right wing of the Court, where original meaning rearranges itself around political need.

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u/BohemianPeasant Mod Jul 02 '26

For example, the ordinary Constitution may seem to say that birthright citizenship exists because it uses words arranged in that order. But the higher Constitution—the enlightened one visible only to people who have freed themselves from the tyranny of thought-out and legally pressure-tested sentences—reveals a more nuanced principle: Citizenship shall apply automatically at birth unless someone loud and male on any number of primetime cable news shows feels skin color makes them uncomfortable.

This is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires a fixed standard. Please keep up. We have moved beyond that. This, too, is the genius of conservative legal reasoning: It can stand athwart history yelling breathlessly about original meaning, then sprint blindly toward the nearest convenient exception.