Libertarian Constitutional Reverence

Here I address a faulty counter argument to the Libertarian’s reverence for Constitutional primacy.

“If you revere the Constitution, then you must have revered slavery, for the Constitution reduced them to three-fifths a people. I’m sorry, but the Constitution can and has been wrong; and there is nothing wrong with doing what’s right over doing what’s Constitutional.”

This is a straw man argument. Libertarians are not saying the Constitution can’t and hasn’t had bad, even immoral policy. Their reverence for the document comes from a reverence for the concept of defining and adhering to axiomatic social laws. The counter argument has cart-before-the-horse logic.

Laws aren’t instantly sacrosanct because they are or were in the Constitution. If the concept is sacrosanct, it needs to be in the Constitution and adhered to.

A concept is sacrosanct if it ensures for universal fundamentals harmonious to the ideals of the federal contract. In the U.S., those ideals include concepts of inherent freedoms.

If we adhere to this aim, we can have a just guiding document. Then, without moral compromise we can ensure all other federal and state laws do not violate the terms of our chief social contract; or we can revisit the integrity of the specifics and correct them through amendment. We cannot simply overlook the terms and bluster when others point out our conflict with the social pact.