Constitution Day and the Battle of Antietam

I’ve been out running chores all day so I don’t have much time to write. But I wanted to remind all my friends that today is CONSTITUTION DAY: the day that 39 founding fathers affixed their signatures to the first written constitution in the history of the world—the first to govern a nation. The very first.

Every country in the world (except five) has followed our example. And the transformational power of that written constitution cannot be studied or thought about too much.

While unwritten constitutions have governed men and women since time immemorial, the emergence of a single unified document crafted by the representatives of the people is an innovation that marks the beginning of the end of monarchy and unchallenged rule of scribes and hierophantic jurists.

The emergence of written constitutions is the beginning of the rule of law joined to the idea of self-government. The accessibility of written constitutions affixes the power of government firmly to ordinary literate people who can point now without guidance to a document and in the light of limited learning declare with stubborn certainty, “here it is written…” “The law gives no such power or prerogative…” The metes and bounds once marked by custom and tradition the domain of judges and kings is now transferred in title, as a surveyed and certain domain now the inheritance of all literate humans.

You see, written words bind the caprice of rulers. They empower the lowly, by giving direct access to the law.

Before this, ordinary folk were shacked with no recourse to the barrister and to the scribe, the scholar and to the Pharisee, all of whom claimed exclusive prerogative to measure out the meaning of unwritten laws and the application of tradition.

Like Judaism and Christian, democracy properly understood must be a civic religion rooted in written words.

Sola Scriptura.

The pilgrims and the adventurers who settled this continent,who made their homes in New England and in the middle colonies and in the South were all people of the book. And their love affair with the written word gave birth to the United States of America. Here the written word has given vibrancy to the spirit of our nation; it is the bulwark of our freedom.

Today is Constitution Day.

This is the day that the human race declared itself free of the dicta of ruling classes and placed the words that govern us, within the grasp of everyman.

And today also, in the strange mysterious beauty of the God’s hand in history, is America bloodiest day.

Liberty, like salvation involves sacrifice.

As poetry and providence write history in indelible scars for those who forget, Antietam was fought on this day September 17th 1862, on the very anniversary of our written constitution,. More Americans were killed and wounded on this day than on any day in the history of our country!

It is no coincidence.

History is written by a power greater than our own.

Truth is written in words–but when words fail, truth is written in blood.

At Antietam, on the shores of the Potomac, the Union Army won a marginal victory. That narrow victory gave Abraham Lincoln the spiritual resolve to issue the Emancipation Proclamation: the death knell of AMERICA’S ORIGINAL SIN: slavery, the sin that our fathers could not purge in their own generation. Our President had promised in a prayer to the Almighty, that if the Union was granted a victory, he, Lincoln, would honor God by using his executive power to end slavery.

Abraham Lincoln made good on his promise.

May all Americans make good on our promise that this country be governed by the rule of law, with written words that have fixed meaning, that “We the People…” who “have ordained and established this Constitution” remember that we were first, and therefore, like all those who lead, set the example for all who follow.