We the Floridians ...

Florida's infamous 1885 Constitution.
(Florida Photographic Collection)
The word "constitution" is an elusive one. Its history is shrouded in contradictory myths, and its reality is cluttered with the inconvenient existence of details and demands. Of late, its become somewhat of a misplaced crusade.

The campaign against the spate of amendments that have been added to Florida's Constitution in recent years is anti-democratic and anti-choice. Its priorities are elitist, and its distrust in the voters is ugly. So perhaps it may come as no surprise to learn about a GOP plot to dump our present Constitution and write a new one.

The conquistador has been mightily bothered by the drumbeat against amendments to the Constitution, which always seem to invoke pregnant pigs. The conquistador voted to protect pregnant pigs, and he's happy that the large scale pig farms (which are excessively cruel to pigs) have now been dissuaded from coming to Florida. Furthermore, no issue cuts to the core of the purpose of government (a constitutional imperative, one might argue) more than compassion toward defenselessness. And pigs have no recourse against the state.

For all the overheated bluster about how Florida's Constitution is being "cluttered" with passages that aren't constitutional, the truth of the American system is that state constitutions are supposed to be cluttered. The old British version of a constitution, which is not a written document but set of ideas, was displaced by the American model, which was famously written during the long hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. But even that meeting also served as a critique of existing state constitutions, which offered examples of radical democracy (Pennsylvania) and enlightened libertarianism (Virginia). Thank goodness that they were cluttered. If they hadn't been, perhaps the federal Constitution wouldn't have been so well informed.

Since the ratification of that document in 1788, state constitutions have served as laboratories of federalism. Policies are suggested, tested, evaluated and, sometimes, abandoned. The state of Florida has been through a number of them: 1838, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1885, and 1968. We are currently using an amended version of the 1968 Constitution. But there's no reason to abandon all the constitutional principles that voters have demanded.

The truth is that Florida's Constitution has a sordid history of being an intellectual battlefield. The 1868 Constitution was written by carpetbaggers who were trying to exact revenge on the Old South by giving the governor the power to appoint all county officeholders, an executive encroachment on local control. The 1885 Constitution sought to seek revenge on the carpetbaggers and abolished the office of lieutenant governor, a reactionary snub to executive power.

In our modern context, conservatives are trying to undo the separation of church and state that prohibits the state from funneling taxpayer dollars to religious institutions. They want to undo the privacy provision that the courts have used to throw out challenges to Florida's abortion laws. In many ways, this is the kind of reactionary government that was used to justify post-Reconstruction violence toward civil liberties.

But we live in reactionary times.

There's nothing inherently wrong with throwing out Florida's existing constitution and starting over if it's the will of the people. Although the best of intentions guided Reconstruction in Florida, the bitterness that evolved from that time was a result of the tin ear given to the wishes of the people. The modern junta considering this revolutionary move is, in fact, engaged in subverting the will of voters. It's a crusade that will bring shame to our republican form of government.