THE METAPHOR

Arlington National Cemetery

DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE

THE METAPHOR

by Adam Carroll Draper

A world ends when its metaphor has died. 
An age becomes an age, all else beside, 
When sensuous poets in their pride invent 
Emblems for the soul’s consent 
That speak the meanings men will never know 
But man-imagined images can show: 
It perishes when those images, though seen, 
No longer mean. 

 Archibald MacLeish (excerpt from Hypocrite Auteur)

 The Supreme Court of the United States decided this week that a World War I Memorial in the shape of a huge cross could remain on public property in Maryland.  The case is American Legion vs. American Humanist Association.   Have you ever wondered how it was just fine a hundred years ago to put up a cross on public property, or have the ten commandments on the wall of a courthouse (as it still is in the Supreme Court itself), or how every school day was started with a prayer, but it’s unconstitutional now? 

 Did the wording of the First Amendment Change?

 Let’s see.  The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.  The First Amendment at that time was “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or of the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition Government for a redress of grievances.”  Checking up on that, it just so happens that the First Amendment is worded exactly the same way today as it was in 1791.   It has not been superseded or amended, although the Supreme Court did decide in the 1940’s that the Bill of Rights applied to the states – which was not the case before it began shaping the law in that direction in a series of cases beginning in the 1920’s.

 Oops, hold on, right there!  What happened?

 Oh, the Supreme Court decided that the 14th Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states as well as the Federal Government, which was the intention of Representative John Bingham when he helped draft it. That did not change the First Amendment, which is exactly the same now as it was when it was ratified.  The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, but it was not immediately held to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. The Supreme Court first started interpreting the 14th Amendment as incorporating the Bill of Rights and applying them to the states in the 1920’s. It was largely through the championing of Hugo Black that the court came to declare that at least the first eight amendments contained in the Bill of Rights applied to the states in the 1940’s.

Fast forward to the present.  We are told that the Constitution is a “living document” that changes with the generations to which it applies without congress or the people amending it as the document itself requires.  Arnold Lowey, who taught me Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina, said once that the vast majority of scholars believe that the Constitution has no inherent meaning, but means only what the Supreme Court says it means.

So if you are wondering how we can suddenly breathe a sigh of relief that a hundred year old World War I Memorial in the form of a huge, stone cross in Maryland is now constitutional, it is so because the Supreme Court says it is. Just so we are clear about the origin of our unalienable rights, we now understand that it is the Supreme Court.

To punctuate this just a bit, think about the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion”. See, it says nothing about the states. The states had their own constitutions. It is very important to note here that applying the Bill of Rights to the states is how civil rights have been enforced since then, so there was a huge, historical reason why the Supreme Court began shaping its decisions as it did. However, the consequence of those decisions was to make the Supreme Court the arbiter of all of our rights, granting itself power it did not have prior to those decisions. The result brought us to this week, where the Supreme Court seriously considered whether a war memorial in the shape of a cross on public land meant that Maryland was establishing Christianity as a state religion.

I titled this missive The Metaphor because of Archibald MacLeish’s poem. We see the images all around us of a history that is being deliberately and inexorably rewritten. In his book Law and Revolution, Harold Berman traced the development of the western legal tradition, showing that our laws themselves were developed over millennia based upon Christian morality. That is, western law itself is a reflection of what western civilization deems right and wrong, and this morality itself is Christian. In fact, Berman concluded that Christianity is part of what it is to be western. Berman was simply stating fact, not championing Christianity. He was a professor at Harvard’s law school, and he was a Jew.

The understanding that Christianity is an inherent part of what it means to be western yields perspective as to why communism has not been accepted in America. Understanding this also opens our eyes to why the left so fervently tries to remove Christianity from public discourse, and Christian symbols from our history. Communists must rewrite history and create a new public morality or people will not tolerate them. This fact led to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which was the destruction of previous Chinese culture. Orwell warned what the left had in mind for us in his book 1984. The fact that we are seeing it now in the ravages of political correctness is not mere happenstance. Western Christendom is under assault.

It is fitting to consider this, particularly at this time of year, in light of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Our government did not grant our rights. God did. Government exists only to ensure them.