The U.S. Constitution is not “trash”

Eli Mystal of The Nation, a left-wing magazine, recently announced on The View that the U.S. Constitution is “kind of trash,” adding, “It was written by slavers and colonists and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looks like me what they thought about the Constitution.”

Unserious comments are daily fare on the ABC talk show, and by themselves, such comments don’t usually merit a response. But sadly, portraying the Constitution as trash is increasingly popular in our often self-righteous and ignorant times. The contemporary mindset assumes that enlightened people alive today sit on the pinnacle of wisdom and justice and may—indeed must—condemn previous generations as morally inferior. Or, in an even more vulgar form, people who lived before us were “trash” whose insights and accomplishments should be disdained.

This arrogant presentism, which judges the past by today’s standards, theologically contravenes the Christian understanding of human nature, history, and eschatology. We who are alive today are not morally superior to past generations. We are by nature as fallen as they were. To the extent our modern ethical standards are superior, such as our near-universal rejection of slavery and our expectation of legal equality for all people, we can only thank previous generations who struggled to reach these understandings thanks to the advance of Biblically inspired principles.

For thousands of years, humanity practiced slavery, and on a nearly universal basis. For thousands of years, humanity assumed that some people were largely consigned to the status or caste of life to which they were born. For thousands of years, humanity privileged its own tribe over other tribes. For thousands of years, humanity mostly assumed the strong were more significant than the persons who served them. Literature from the ancient world, outside of the Bible, largely ignores the stories of slaves, servants, laborers, and other minions. Why not? History is written by emperors, great generals, conquerors, the very wealthy, the very talented, the very beautiful. Ordinary people don’t count for much. They are footnotes to the story of great people, so it was claimed.

The Bible, in contrast, claims that God uses the lowly to humble the mighty. It claims God works through slaves, shepherds, fishermen, nomads, housewives, maidens, eunuchs, even prostitutes. It even claims God most definitively revealed Himself by becoming a carpenter’s son. That Son never owns property or has wealth or earthly power or holds any public office, yet He is the Lord over all creation and rules over all emperors forever. This Son submits to become sin on the cross to atone for the sins of all humanity and vindicates Himself by rising from the dead. It’s the craziest story ever told, and yet this story continues to overthrow all of fallen humanity’s most natural assumptions.

No culture not influenced by this story ever determined to draft a Constitution that implied, much less claimed, some real equality for all persons—much less that rulers are servants of the ruled. Even more than 1,700 years after Christ, the U.S. Constitution, preceded by the Declaration of Independence, made startling claims that were truly unique up until then in history. Even now, these principles are not affirmed by many other nations and cultures on Earth. The drafters themselves were startled by the radical affirmation of common humanity in their statement and wondered if it could endure. As fallen humans themselves, they failed to abide by its spirit.

The Constitution did not ban slavery or guarantee equal rights to all persons regardless of race and ethnicity, nor did it give legal equality to women. But it was truly revolutionary, rejecting hereditary monarchs and the aristocracy, creating a republic governed by laws and not by capricious men. It set America and much of the world on the path toward a nearly universal expectation that all persons should be treated equally and that government should exist by the consent of the governed.

After the ratification of the Constitution, the logic spread to many parts of the globe. A growing expectation of universal franchise, not for just a small number of wealthy persons, began to prevail. Most states abolished slavery within the lifetimes of the Founders. Within a single lifespan, all slavery was abolished. Within 61 years, the women’s rights assembly at Seneca Falls, N.Y., occurred. Not long after the last Revolutionary War veteran had died, constitutional amendments granted citizenship and voting rights to former slaves.

It took another century to guarantee those promises, and America is not now nor never will be, this side of the eschaton, fully aligned with divine justice. But behold what God hath wrought within only a few lifetimes after the Constitution. Billions of people now live under similar constitutions or aspire to. Ukrainians, it can be assumed, don’t think the U.S. Constitution is trash. And neither does any person who knows human history and human nature or prizes human liberty.

Eli Mystal, before he appears again on The View, should reflect on these truths. So should the rest of us.