The least worst option

David Davis, at the Libertarian Alliance, is overwhelmed with enthusiasm for the ongoing constitutional debate (despite the evidence).

This sort of discussion usually bogs down in complicated politico-philosophical terminology and so, lacking the relevant vocabulary to the extent of having to make up words (you’ll have to guess which), I would prefer to keep this simple.

A written Constitution is, according to Proudhon, no good because we, the signatories to it, have no right to inflict it upon our posterity without their consent in turn. There appears to be no practical mechanism whereby this consent can be obtained or withheld.

An unwritten Constitution has the disadvantage that it is subject to the continuous interpretation of the establishment and is incomprehensible to the layman (I happen to have an ‘O’ Level in ‘British Constitution’, which I always say is as comprehensive a condemnation of the said constitution as one could wish to have), both conditions leading to the steady erosion of such freedoms as it once claimed to establish and defend.

Proudhon was an anarchist and as such he is, of course, quite right. Constitutions are usually unacceptable to anarchists.

The point of being a libertarian seems to be that the attractive but unattainable ideals of anarchism are so modified as to make their achievement at least theoretically possible. The main reason for the difference is a time factor; anarchists say that people are naturally nice, and will be nice if allowed to be, whereas libertarians say that though this is quite likely to be true in the long term, in the short term a number of people are not naturally nice, and this must be taken into account in the making of one’s dispositions.

On this basis I am inclined to believe that a written Constitution, despite its philosophical shortcomings, provides at least in the short term the highest probability of doing what it is supposed to do, which is to provide for the rule of law, the defence of the realm and the freedom of the individual.