Constitutionolatry

constitutionolatry English Etymology From en Constitution -olatry. Pronunciation en ɒlətɹi 7 Noun - en nonce The worship of the Constitution. en an American Anomalies of the American Constitution Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country LXXIII CCCCXXXVIII London Longmans, Green, and Co. June 1866 717 https://archive.org/details/frasersmagazine03unkngoog/page/717/mode/1up 2 the written Constitution bequeathed by them to the country became a Holy Scripture. A man was permitted to think as he pleased about the Bible; but it was accounted blasphemy to whisper a suspicion that any clause in the American Constitution was not written by Divine inspiration. Our fathers had devoured Metis herself, and lo! panoplied Wisdom sprang from their brain. This Constitutionolatry was real in the first generation after the formation of the Federal Union. en T. [Reviews.] The Origin and Growth of the English Constitution. An Historical Treatise, [etc.] By Hannis Taylor. In Two Parts. Part I: The Making of the Constitution. Pp. xl. and 616. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The American: A Journal of Literature, Science, the Arts, and Public Affairs XIX 485 Philadelphia, Pa. 23 November 1889 110–111 Yet we find even Mr. Gladstone praising our Constitution as the creation of the men in 1787; and in America there has been a kind of Constitutionolatry which has tended to obscure the historic origin of its methods and principles through the very intensity of the admiration felt for its wisdom. en L. E. [Letters from the People] Justice Hughes and the Supreme Court w:St. Louis Post-Dispatch 83 279 St. Louis, Mo. 12 June 1931 2C https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/138843594/ 1 The Constitution-olatry that holds a secular document as sacred, despite its flexibility in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court; the popular belief that has grown up that the Supreme Court alone has the final power of interpretation over not only the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government, but also over the states in matters not only legal but often executive and political, and the fact that the Judges rule practically for life without any necessary restraint whatever from popular opinion and will—all these factors make the Supreme Court in many varied matters an almost absolute dictator of an otherwise democratic republic. en Christopher B. Gray Philosophical Reflections on the United States Constitution: A Collection of Bicentennial Essays Studies in Social and Political Theory 4 Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston; Lampeter The Edwin Mellen Press 1989 169 https://archive.org/details/philosophicalref0000unse_t1w4/page/169/mode/1up 0-88946-104-X THE DANGERS OF CONSTITUTIONOLATRY / Sterba’s Disturbing View of the Role of Constitutional Rights / A Commentary / Robert C. L. Moffat Those theses provide us examples of four different sorts of idolatry of the Constitution. en Daniel Lazare The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy Harcourt Brace & Company 1996 305 0-15-100085-9 The parallels between the “Bibliolatry” of Milton’s day and the “Constitutionolatry” of ours are striking. en w:Bill Kauffman Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Martin Luther ISI Books 2008 978-1-4976-3575-3 There has been a strain of Constitutionolatry that dismisses the Antis as bitter and indebted farmers and shiftless mechanics, indurated knuckledraggers all, who darkly and unfairly viewed the document as having been framed by aristocrats in the service of the money power. en Jim Burklo Captain Moroni and Divine Revelation: On the Oregon Protesters and Christian Jihadism w:Patheos https://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2016/01/captain-moroni-and-divine-revelation-on-the-oregon-protesters-and-christian-jihadism/ 11 January 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160114070603/http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2016/01/captain-moroni-and-divine-revelation-on-the-oregon-protesters-and-christian-jihadism/ 14 January 2016 Constitutionolatry isn’t about the contents of the Constitution. It’s about claiming privileged access to the divine Word that is presumed to have created it, the voice of the Lord that can whisper in the ears of individual citizens and give them an authority that trumps that of Constitutionally-elected officials. en 21 March 2016 Jim Burklo The Mindful Mirror of Passion Week w:HuffPost https://web.archive.org/web/20250626160850/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mindful-mirror-of-pas_b_9517440 Many if not most of those Constitution-wavers really don't know or care care what the document says. They wave it to cast a ceremonial blessing on their opinions. It's Constitutionolatry, a word I just made up, which means the worship or idolatry of the Constitution, without being mindful of its contents. It's a kissin' cousin to pistolatry, the worship of guns. Pistolatry and Constitutionolatry are kissin' cousins to bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible without being mindful of the cultural or historical contexts in which its books were composed. Related terms en constitutionolatry en US politics