THE NEW Republican leadership in the House tried to capture the US Constitution by reading a somewhat bowdlerized version of it aloud on the House floor this week. It was an obvious sop to the Tea Party movement, whose disparate causes often congeal in the belief that the federal government has grown bigger than the founders intended. But the Constitution is hardly the exclusive domain of Republicans or conservatives. Indeed, there are some enumerated rights in the document that could make Speaker John Boehner weep.
Just as the Democratic and Republican caucuses leap up and cheer lustily at the State of the Union address when the president hits on a pet issue of either party, so too do both sides selectively applaud the Constitution. The nativists in Arizona might want to skip over Article One Section 8, for example: the part that gives the federal government authority to “establish an uniform rule of naturalization’’ (that is, power over immigration law). The First Amendment guarantees both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was no government minimalist. He even believed the federal government ought to prevent a widening gap between rich and poor, passing laws to “raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort,’’ and “reduce extreme wealth.’’
Then there are those pesky first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights. Everyone has his or her favorite: conservatives like the Second (the right to bear arms) and the 10th (powers given to the states) — except when the 10th Amendment allows states to legalize gay marriage or medical marijuana. Liberals like the First (free speech and assembly) and the 14th (equal protection under the law) — except when the First allows corporations to spend unlimited campaign cash. In other words, it’s all in the interpretation.
“I’ve read the Constitution,’’ said US Representative Michael Capuano. “I’ve also read the Bible and Moby Dick. People have argued over the meaning of these things for years.’’ Capuano dismissed the reading of the Constitution aloud as “a stunt.’’
Some Democrats joined in the ceremony, and good for them. No one party owns the Constitution any more than one party owns the flag. The ostentatious flaunting of patriotic symbols tends to make liberals queasy. But why cede the meaning of the nation’s founding documents to a hostile ideology?
The House leadership also passed a rule requiring all submitted bills to include a citation showing where in the Constitution Congress is given the authority to enact the legislation. Many see this as laying the groundwork for an attack on the new health care law, which House Republicans are promising to “repeal’’ next week. Opponents of the law say it is unconstitutional because it requires individuals to buy insurance coverage. But the broad mandate for government action to “promote the public welfare’’ is right there in the preamble.
That’s the point about the Constitution: It doesn’t pretend to cover every eventuality. It’s only 4,543 words. What it does is provide is a framework and structure for debate, and then give a podium to three co-equal branches of government.
Only the most rabid originalist would think the Constitution should be implemented precisely as it was written; if so, we’d still be counting blacks as three-fifths of a person. The founders didn’t anticipate an end to slavery or women’s suffrage, to say nothing of gay rights or Internet privacy issues. But the genius of those white, male, property-owning rebels is that they wrote guiding principles elastic enough to embrace subsequent generations. “People read the Constitution and believed it,’’ said Carol Rose, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Over time, women, blacks, and others not in the prevailing culture of 1785 absorbed the Constitution’s message and started believing that its freedoms and protections could apply to them.
The circle of rights keeps expanding. The Constitution’s beauty and power are not in its reading, but in its hearing.
Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe. 
