A Document of Liberty
The U.S. Constitution guarantees security for a flourishing way of life that we couldn't dream of elsewhere.
The Constitution is easily, in my view, the best legal document to have ever graced the planet. And yet, it’s taken for granted by so many Americans today. As a son of immigrants and an evangelical Christian, the Constitution and its principles guarantee security for my flourishing way of life in ways that I couldn’t dream of elsewhere.
My parents moved from China to America in the 1990s and were able to build a life here for my sister and me in a way that would have been unfathomable back in China. This is in large part due to the freedoms guaranteed to us in the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment, which protects private property, gave my parents access to house ownership, which, as many know, is one of the greatest ways to achieve economic success and generate generational wealth.
As evangelical Christians, the First Amendment also protects our right to exercise our religion as we see fit. In many countries today, it is illegal to be Christian because, unlike here, there is no protection for the free exercise of religion. In China, for example, the government has historically and recently cracked down greatly on churches and Christian organizations. Many Christians in America take this for granted, as we’re so used to being able to practice our religion without fear of government persecution here.
Yet, there are many threats to the Constitution today, some of which are more pressing than others.
From the left, you have many who want to impose progressive views on sexuality, marriage, and gender identity onto religious groups and institutions who hold theological convictions that are contradictory to their views. Many Supreme Court cases have involved individuals suing businesses for refusing to create content that violates their religious beliefs. Religious liberty is one of the things that makes America great, and taking those First Amendment protections of free exercise of religion away will be a disaster and will be a direct assault on a fundamental pillar of the American experiment.
From the right, you have a rising group who are self-described Christian Nationalists, or who otherwise want to impose their religious views on the entire populace. Some of them even claim that the Constitution has failed and we need to institute a Christian theocracy in America instead. History has shown that whenever the church has been wedded to the state, it’s always ended disastrously. Separating church and state was a huge reason why the church in America was able to thrive and grow. Wedding them together would produce a deadbeat church drained of its spiritual livelihood. It would also be inhumane to impose one’s religious views on religious minorities, as “convert or die” is not an ethical way to evangelize or win converts, not to mention the fact that many of these would be lip-service converts anyway out of fear of being killed or persecuted.
The Constitution, while awesome, has also had historical shortcomings and failures. The most glaring case of this is when it comes to slavery and race. The original Constitution countenanced race-based chattel slavery and let it continue unabated, and (due to circumstances admittedly not envisioned by the Founding Fathers) slavery actually got worse and worse until the Civil War broke out rather than better as the founding generation had expected. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed post-Civil War, but the federal government basically openly allowed the Southern states to circumvent them for far too long. Convict leasing essentially forced freedmen back into slavery in order to subvert the 13th Amendment, and Jim Crow laws regarding segregation and voting were meant to subvert the 14th and 15th.
Many today, especially on the right, associate opposition to the Constitution with the political left, but conservatives have a history of opposing it as well. In the South before the Civil War, if a reporter or journalist wanted to exercise their First Amendment rights and write a piece denouncing slavery, Southern state authorities could (and would) imprison you for it, which is a blatant violation of freedom of speech.
The entirety of Jim Crow was one huge near-century chunk of conservatives (and yes, segregationists were conservative) subverting the 14th and 15th Amendments. Many on the left point to this hypocrisy, and for how long it went on (from the Founding all the way into the ‘60s), as proof that the Constitution is inherently and irredeemably racist and therefore is not a worthy document.
However, the irony of this is that the most prominent abolitionists and civil rights activists (Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., respectively) disagree thoroughly with this anti-Constitution view. Douglass and King (and many others) explicitly appealed to the ideals of the American Founding and the Constitution to inspire and push forward their movements for freedom and equality.
In spite of racists abusing their power to subvert the God-given rights of black people and other racial minorities, it was ultimately the Constitution that shined through, and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s were a (very much overdue and delayed) enforcement of the spirit of the 14th and 15th Amendments. To be sure, the long shadow and legacy of centuries of overtly state-sanctioned white supremacy still greatly looms over us in many ways—even systemic—to this day, but the reason things have gotten much better is because of the victory of Constitutional ideals, not in spite of them like some on the left would say.
Ultimately, the Constitution is a fantastic legal document and I dare say that there has never been a single legal document as conducive to human thriving as it. As a son of Chinese immigrants and an evangelical Christian, I have personally benefitted greatly from its ideals and am eternally grateful to the United States for it.
I am mindful, though, of the way it’s failed so many for so long, especially for my black brothers and sisters. The solution to that isn’t to toss the Constitution out and deem it irredeemably racist and white supremacist. The solution to that is to acknowledge our historical shortcomings and work to use those constitutional ideals to fight against lingering systemic racism as a result of those centuries of failure to guarantee racial equality. On this Constitution Day, with attacks on the Constitution coming from both sides, I want to give the Constitution and its ideals my vote of confidence, and I would encourage my fellow American citizens to do the exact same.
Luke Miao is currently a soldier in the US Army. He’s a Texas native and he has also lived overseas before in Shanghai, China. He swam competitively for ten years including collegiately at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice in 2022. In his free time he loves watching TV, swimming, and reading about the evangelical Christian world. @LukithunderEWC
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“The entirety of Jim Crow was one huge near-century chunk of conservatives (and yes, segregationists were conservative) subverting the 14th and 15th Amendments.”
Hmm. I think that’s debatable depending on what is meant by the term conservative. Certainly Lincoln made an argument that the anti-slavery Republican Party was more conservative (he used that word) in upholding the spirit and letter of the Founding than its Democratic opponents. For decades, Jim Crow was the policy of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was the party of civil rights. And, yes, the Democratic Party was reliably more progressive and interested in central planning during that period. As an aside, the Confederacy was into central planning.
Great conservative Republicans like Coolidge and Harding were both the most pro-civil-rights presidents until recent memory and pro-business/pro-market lovers of the Founding and the Constitution/Declaration. Our most progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, was a member of the KKK and wanted a break with the past, an overturning of Founding tradition. There’s at least as much of a through-line from Wilson to Obama as there is from Coolidge to Reagan.
But in the sense that they were interested in preserving a traditional Southern way of life, yes the Jim Crow South was “conservative.”