The Constitution: "Living" or "Enduring"?

Jonah Goldberg writes an interesting and insightful column on the Liberal (with a big L, not a little one) invocation of the "Living Constitution" when it suits their purposes. The whole kerfuffle over the NSA wiretap issue is Exhibit A, and Goldberg's entire argument is summed up in the last three paragraphs:

Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that Bush's wiretapping is both corrosive to liberty and flatly contradicts the original intent of the founders. Well, in an age when the Constitution is made of flubber, that hardly makes it indefensible. I know that liberals think "evolution" has an inherently positive connotation; that if A evolves to B, then B must be better in some way than A. But, as any conservative will tell you, "evolution" and "improvement" are hardly synonymous.

For the first time in decades, liberals are grasping that the "living Constitution" can grow into something tyrannical. They had no problem with the Constitution's blob-like expansion into areas conservatives cherish (nor did they care much when Bill Clinton used the Constitution in ways the anti-Bush crowd now defines as Orwellian). But now that the shoe's on the other foot, they suddenly see genius in those old fusty white men.

The problem is, you can't switch back and forth from living Constitution to dead and keep your credibility. The whole point of constitutions is that the rules remain the same when convenient and inconvenient, which is why justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia often rule contrary to their political preferences. But liberals ask the Constitution to play dead when convenient, and then, when the temporary crisis has passed, they want it to burst forth in living Technicolor. In other words, the Founding Fathers are only right when Al Gore thinks they were right. All other times, they're irrelevant old white men.

Read the whole thing.