The saga of the constitutional word

My dad tells the story of my parents’ citizenship interview with INS officers. Mother was asked what the highest law of the land was, and without a pause, she replied: “The Ten Commandments.” Hearing this in an adjoining room separated by a makeshift divider, my father loudly added, “and the Constitution of the United States.” Mom did forego a high school diploma to raise five kids with a pastor who went on to a post-graduate education. My dad tells the story to underscore his distinction between what is correct and what is true. His was the correct answer, he says, but mom’s response was more truthful.

Wednesday marks the last of the Four Cs that is a distinctive hallmark in CNMI holidays—in January, Commonwealth; in March, Covenant; November is Citizenship, and December brings Constitution Day. Presumably, this quartet of reminders of civic consciousness was meant to deepen our sense of civilian responsibility and broaden the extent of our democratic governance, or, at least, widen the scope of its discourse.

As a student in Kentucky in the mid-60s, a freshly separated pupil from the daily tutelage of VOA broadcasts and USIS pamphlets overseas, I was only too eager to parade my self-confident acquaintance with things American. In a dormitory group conversation, quoting Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” I was politely told that Lincoln’s wording was incorrect as a description of the United States government. In fact, “ours is a constitutional government, of laws and not of men.” Lincoln’s phrasing of the Jeffersonian sentiment that “all men are created equal,” I was told, was, at best, political ideology and had no scientific basis.

The U.S. President before s/he enters the Executive office, says this constitutional oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” “Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” has since become a part of every oath of office in the public and secular domain that I have attended.

So, in the American mindset, the Constitution, or, constitutional thinking, is a big deal.

Again, in the 60s, I heard elaborate and labored arguments on why things needed to remain the way they were conceived by the framers of the American Constitution, deviance of which constituted treason. Easily, civil rights for all, women’s suffrage and equality in the workplace, limitations to the right to bear arms, right of assembly, freedom from fear of coercive power, and many other issues were passionately supported and/or disputed with what speakers would deem appropriate citations from the U.S. Constitution.

Admittedly, the 60s were the tail end of the dominance of the male White Anglo-Saxon Protestant authoritative figure, with its inherited revelatory bias and acquired canonical status of traditional documents. It does not help that the translation of “Logos” in the New Testament Gospel of John where it asserts that in “the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” “Word” is popularly understood as the printed word, rather than its more profound meaning of “reality.” Thus, “The Word of God” immediately translates into the printed Bible. To quote scripture is to don the cloak of authority. For the dominant male WASP, defending the literal interpretation of Biblical scriptures segued easily into other documents, particularly that of the U.S. Constitution.

My teenybopper audience recently introduced me to the movie, The Prince and Me, where the leading female character, confronted by a Shakespeare-quoting royal Dane, expressed deep exasperation over the barb’s inability to just say things in plain words. She represents the pervasive and pernicious literalism of our scientific age, which has since spilled into the realm of interpreting symbolic religious and secular literature.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution found it necessary to include an amendment process to insure that the wisdom of their time does not get calcified in the limitation of the spoken and printed word. It does not explicitly nor implicitly contain eternal verities that remain to be discovered. It grows. When I hear someone claims what the “Constitution says,” I tend to retort with, “you mean, you say the Constitution provides.”

The Ninth District Court of Appeals‚ much-maligned decision on the so-called “stateless” CNMI residents points to the fact that the CNMI Commonwealth Constitution is derived from the Covenant Agreement which ultimately accounts before the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is organic. It is dynamic. It evolves. A constitution worth anything, is a living organism.

The Constitution does not say anything; people do. While Lincoln might have been technically incorrect, his description of the government of the Union was perhaps, more real and authentic.

It is likely that in the next election, we get to choose whether we need a Constitutional Convention to revisit the Commonwealth Constitution. Certain sectors have already identified critical issues to be looked at. One is the matter of the alienation of land. Another is the provision for public education. That we should revisit the Constitution periodically is not questioned, only the manner of “how.”

My sixth grade students, susceptible to the currents of fads and fashion, particularly in speech, are wont to say, “Get real.” They do not say that one must be correct, or should get it right. They hardly have anything to say about being proper. But being authentic, getting real, they have a nose for that—and for my “We the People” kind of thinking, that may just be at the heart of being constitutional.

The INS officer who interviewed my mother was quoted as saying afterwards: “It is refreshing to get real answers rather than rote memory answers. Not particularly worried about being accurate, your mom just told the truth.” Needless to say, mom wears her red, white, and blue up her sleeves.

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Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School and writes a regular column for the Saipan Tribune.