Opinion: 5 fundamentals to celebrate in our inspired Constitution

In the summer of 1956, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution calling for — and President Dwight Eisenhower issued a proclamation establishing — the recognition of “Constitution Week” following Sept. 17 of every year to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Not content to simply do the bare minimum, Utahns have gone the extra mile: Earlier this year, the Utah State Legislature passed, and Gov. Spencer Cox signed, a law establishing September as “American Founders and Constitution Month.”

I am happy to see the state of Utah commemorate what British Prime Minister William Gladstone called “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” Its creation was, as Washington wrote to Lafayette, “little short of a miracle.” However, I worry that many Utahns, and Americans more generally, do not understand what makes the creation of the U.S. Constitution worth celebrating.

President Dallin H. Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court Justice and now first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has recently recalled a conversation he had in the 1960s with a fellow law professor that I think is worth noting. When President Oaks was at the University of Chicago Law School, one of his colleagues reported that when he had previously been a professor at the University of Utah Law School, many of his students “seemed to believe that the Constitution was divinely inspired … but none of them could ever tell me what this meant or how it affected their interpretation of the Constitution.”

Taking this challenge personally, Oaks has, on repeated occasions, explained what is worth celebrating in the U.S. Constitution. The genius of the American Constitution, he has pointed out, is how it restrains government tyranny, and facilitates human freedom, through five fundamental political principles: popular sovereignty, federalism, the separation of powers, guarantees of individual rights and the rule of law.

It is not enough for Americans today to merely celebrate the U.S. Constitution. We must honor those “great fundamentals” of the Constitution through political actions that uphold and defend popular sovereignty, federalism, the separation of powers, individual rights and the rule of law. Practicing these principles of pluralism in our own political lives, and electing public officials who are guided by these constitutional bulwarks in the way they govern, is far more important than any flag-waving or pin-wearing we might do.

One of the greatest threats to constitutional government in the United States today is partisan tribalism. For much of our country’s history, we had a healthy two-party system that tied citizens to their political community and their political institutions. Today’s parties are plagued by mythical “left-right” thinking that tells party members that their own political group is, by virtue of being on the correct side of an illusory unidimensional spectrum, enlightened and correct about everything, while the opposing political group is, by definition of being on the wrong side of this misleading spectrum, benighted and correct about nothing.

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As a result, many of today’s partisans believe they can justify any violation of constitutional principles by themselves or their leaders by simply saying that “the other side is worse” or that “the ends justify the means.”

The temptations that Americans face today — to try to overturn the outcomes of free and fair elections, to concentrate power in the national government, to concentrate national government power in the presidency, to violate constitutionally protected rights and to trample the rule of law — come from the desire partisans have to always see their own political tribe “win” and the other political tribe “lose.” Such win-at-all-costs thinking is threatening the world’s most successful and enduring constitutional republic.

The key to saving liberal democracy in America today is not to get rid of disagreement, but — as Gov. Cox has pointed out — to disagree better. Rather than stamping people with political labels, and then assuming we know everything about them, we need to rationally and civilly discuss politics on an issue-by-issue basis, seeing what we might be able to learn from someone with a different background and experiences. Rather than declaring ourselves, or someone else, “left-wing” or “right-wing,” and then engaging in rhetorical bomb-throwing at our enemies in online forums, we would be better off shedding those misleading labels and simply talking about the pros and cons of various issues in face-to-face conversations and in good faith.

Yes, we have just two major parties, and many of us will certainly prefer one to the other, but let’s not pretend, by invoking some imaginary “left-right” spectrum, that our current party’s issue positions all flow out of a righteous and intelligent philosophy, while the other party’s issue positions all flow out of an evil and foolish philosophy.

The truth is that the meanings of “progressivism” and “conservatism,” and the content of the Democratic and Republican party platforms, are constantly changing — whether we are talking about free speech, economic regulation, foreign military intervention, abortion, free trade, taxes, government debt or the importance of character in elected officials, to name just a few issues. Given how frequently our two major parties flip-flop on major issues of the day, principled voters will occasionally alternate which party and candidates they prefer from election to election.

People who practice this kind of political humility, which places the public interest over party interests, are much more likely to be thoughtful, kind and charitable participants in the public square. They are more likely to object when the parties and candidates they voted for — and not just the other party’s members — violate the principles of popular sovereignty, federalism, the separation of powers, individual rights or the rule of law. These people are more likely to exhibit the “spirit of amity” and “mutual deference” modeled by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

If we continue on the current path of only criticizing the other party — and always justifying our own party — then this constitutional republic cannot endure. We must be willing to stand up for democracy, federalism, the separation of powers, constitutional rights and the rule of law regardless of which party or politician tramples these ideals. This is the best way that Utah, and America more broadly, can honor American Founders and Constitution Month this September.

Verlan Lewis is the Stirling Professor of Constitutional Studies, and an associate professor of political science, at Utah Valley University. He is co-author of the new book “The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America.”