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“We the people of the United
States – so we can make a country, get along fairly, stay safe,
defend ourselves, take care of each other, and make sure we and our
children stay free – now write the highest, most supreme law of the
United States in this Constitution.” –
From “Constitution Translated
for Kids”
I suppose it had to happen.
We have reached the point where an American document, arguably THE
American document, written in English, must be translated so that
schoolchildren can understand it.
Or maybe it’s so teachers can
teach it, or because our courts have made “interpret” a bad word.
In any event, author Cathy Travis, a 20-year Capitol Hill staffer,
has her heart in the right place: she wants kids to understand the
basis of American government.
When I was in school (a
phrase my daughter says makes me seem almost as old as do my musical
tastes), this was accomplished by teaching it. Today the
Constitution gets an inch-deep look in some curricula, with too much
editorializing and too little instruction.
Travis has likely doped that
out from critiques of her work, perhaps most notably the attacks on
her use of the phrase “citizens have the right to own firearms” in
her take on the Second Amendment. That has been the widely accepted
view since it was drafted, but is hallucinated away by some who
prefer to think of the Constitution as a “living” document. In this
view, the Constitution can be read as desired to suit the whims of
the day, no messy amendments required.
Travis has reportedly long
chaffed at public misunderstanding of the Constitution, but the
final straw was the hoo-ha surrounding the 2000 presidential
election. Her hope is that a re-write in contemporary language will
lift the mist a bit.
While I wish her luck, a look
at Bible translation is instructive. Unless one happens to be
fluent in ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, one has little choice
but to read a translation. Though there are excellent versions
available, some are dotted with the personal notions of the
translators and even the best can be spun by the reader.
Archaic language is also a
challenge, in both the Constitution and the Bible. I once heard a
Baptist preacher say he used to apologize for reading from the King
James Version to nondenominational Christian groups until he heard a
country song titled “If the King James Version Was Good Enough for
John the Baptist, It’s Good Enough for Me.” From where I sit the
same goes for James Madison’s English and the Constitution.
I had the opportunity to sit
in on an informal give-and-take with a U.S. Supreme Court justice
earlier this year. Pegged a conservative and known for a
by-the-book approach, the justice opined that “Constitutional
evolutionists” on the Court are always satisfied with their
decisions because they feel entitled to insert their own biases.
Our speaker, on the other
hand, claimed a duty to impose the law as written, like it or not.
This was put to a test when the justice became part of a one-vote
majority holding that burning the American flag is a protected form
of speech, though the jurist finds the practice repugnant. Adding
insult to injury, our speaker’s spouse treated the justice to a cold
shoulder that evening, accompanied by a stirring rendition of “Stars
and Stripes Forever.”
Contrary to the “living
document” schools of Biblical and Constitutional scholarship,
neither really needs much interpretation. People do it anyway,
almost always to ill effect, but the best antidote for
Constitutional misinterpretation isn’t more interpretation.
Teach it in the language in
which it was written, which happens to be the one most of us speak
for Pete’s sake. Punch it up with the life stories of those who
wrote it and understanding will come.
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