Ornithology of their ontology, if you will.

Amendment XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Gerald made a good point above, and it echoes something I said earlier: If you were serious about running the American government as if it were the Catholic Church, you should oppose democratic representation and support the infallibility of George Bush instead. Somehow I don’t think you really want to do that.

The ‘sola scriptura’ people claim that the Bible is a complete guide to faith and morals. In contrast, no one is claiming that the Constitution says everything that needs to be said about politics, and in fact the principle aim of the Constitution itself is to set up a “political magisterium” to pronounce on political questions. We call it Congress and the President. Most of the substantive portions of the Constitution are amendments that were added as afterthoughts.

Here’s another huge difference: a big part of the controversy between protestants and catholics is about *who* interpretes the Bible, not how. No one seriously argues that when the Pope addresses some moral or ethical question he shouldn’t try to understand biblical text in its original context and meaning, nor that he should over-ride the text if its inconsistent with contemporary beliefs. But this is what the living Constitution folks claim.

I think what’s tripping you up (not to mention Henry and MM) is that you seem to be completely unfamiliar with any of the scholarly debates about American constitutional law. You also have a stereotyped and misguided understanding of what textualism and originalism mean.

No one is denying that the Supreme Court does interpret and apply the Constitution to modern circumstances — in a limited sense. Thus, to take a fairly recent example, the Fourth Amendment bans unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, but it was an open question whether this constitutional provision allowed the local police to go around with heat sensors that could somehow tell if you were growing marijuana on your property. The Supreme Court had to interpret that constitutional provision and try to determine whether those heat sensors were the sort of thing that the Founders’ language should be read to ban.

Scalia wrote the opinion in that case, and he held that the Fourth Amendment DID ban the use of such sensors. Note that Scalia is nothing other than the most famous proponent of textualism. So that should dispel these strawmen arguments that textualism just means going back to the 18th century and refusing to consider anything about modern circumstances.

To the contrary, what textualism means is that while a Supreme Court Justice should apply the text and its principles to modern circumstances, it’s illegitimate to make up a new principle just because he likes it better. The perfect example is abortion. Faced with the argument (in Roe) that “due process of law” means “no abortion laws,” the textualist will say, “That just not what the phrase due process of law means, not now and not then.” The originalist will add, “The exact same people who ratified that 14th Amendment text back in 1868 also passed innumerable laws banning or restricting abortion, and that proves that they would never have read the 14th Amendment to make their own abortion laws illegal.”

The sorts of arguments that you and Henry are making (I assume unwittingly) are PRECISELY the arguments used to justify Roe. Whenever a textualist says, “The 14th Amendment shouldn’t be interpreted to protect abortion, because that’s not what its text or original meaning do,” liberal constitutional scholars and thinkers make precisely your argument: “Oh, my goodness, how retrograde to be limited by a 19th-century understanding of what liberties the Constitution protects.”

Mind you, if that is where constitutionalism will take you then you are welcome to it. As for me, I shall be content with Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium interpreting Sacred Scripture for my religion and for my civics I will be content with a Court making decisions based on precedent and on contextualised reading that doesn’t merely seek to return to the “original intent in its original context” because in that way lies nothing but arbitrary individualistic outcomes.

Consider this: the USA constitution was written some time in the last quarter of the 18th century by men who had views shaped by the common opinions of their day. Many were slave owners and they saw no constitutional reason to liberate their slaves. In their context slaves were merely property with which they could do as they pleased. They could kill a slave, injure him or her, maybe even rape him or her and so on. Do you really want to return to that “original context” to find the “original meaning” so that you can apply it to 21st century issues such as abortion or free speech etc? If you do then why not join the “Christian Reconstructionists” and try the same thing with the Scriptures; after all, the scriptures are a more foundational document than the constitution could ever hope to be. …

Rational discourse when it’s so hard to figure out what the heck you’re even trying to say. As best as I can tell, you’ve said this:

“Originalism as an interpretive method is wrong; the original Constitution protected slavery [never mind that this was radically reversed by the Civil War amendments, I don't care about that and can't explain what effect it had], and therefore you can’t get the Constitution to ban aborton [which no one was arguing for anyway], and anti-abortion legislation somehow goes against the “context” of the Constitution [whatever the heck that's supposed to mean], and I support the Supreme Court as a living interpreter [which is the very thing that led to Roe, but I don't seem to be aware of that], and by the way I have nothing but contempt for the conservatives who have explained why Roe is wrong, and I think they are guilty of sophistry [for what reason, I will never explain].”

He doesn’t see/agree that judges are supposed to be neutral.
Many would argue that politicians are supposed to represent the people who elected them. I personally prefer my judges to be prejudiced toward justice. If neutrality furthers that then neutrality is good. If it is used an excuse to do evil, then it is really all that valuable.