Happy Constitution Day;
Maybe We Should Make It a Genuine Holiday

I didn't know this was a day, actually.

But now that I've heard "Constitution Day" I'm wondering why we don't make it an official holiday. Give the federal bureaucracy an extra day off (and maybe don't give them as big of raise in recognition for that).

And then citizens can privately lobby their employers to elevate Constitution Day to a "real holiday" and give them the day off.

Put it in August, a month with no holidays.

I know this is Symbolic but symbolic is not synonymous with "without effect." There is something to be said for elevating the Constitution higher in what might be termed the American Secular Pantheon. We essentially get days off to recognize the contributions of our Secular Saints (Washington, Lincoln, MLK, Jr., the signatories of the Declaration of Independence). And if we're recognizing the Saints of American Republican Democracy, we should also formally recognize their creed.

Our creed.

Plus, frankly, the liberals will hate it, and that's a useful lesson to them, because liberals have to start asking themselves, one of these days, when they went from celebrating the Constitution to despising it, and why they did so, and what that makes them now.

If we can't stick in another paid federal holiday -- Cannibalize Labor Day. Oh man would that set off a firestorm of dishonest argumentation. On one hand the Smart Set Liberals would attempt to denigrate the push for a Constitution Day by saying "this is all silly partisan symbolism aimed at validating a particular worldview" and in their next breath they'd scream about how we're destroying the Symbolism of Labor Day.

I always hate-laugh at that argument. With one fist they club you with the demeaning attack that you're basically mischievous and ill-mannered children too smitten with symbolic gestures. But with the fist they cling desperately to their own symbolic validations.

But, as Michael Barone recently wrote (I think quoting someone else), "All proceduralist arguments are fundamentally dishonest, including this one."

This is kind of a silly idea but why not? Let's take the Constitution seriously.

Today is Constitution Day Because They Signed It Today: Okay, fine, I don't think that really matters, but in that case move Labor day to the middle of August, and make the Monday after the second Tuesday in September Constitution Day. That'll get you close to the 17th.

posted by Ace at 03:07 PM

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