I RECENTLY DISCOVERED THAT IF YOU WALK AROUND NEW YORK CITY WHILE CARRYING A COLONIAL-ERA MUSKET, you get a lot of questions.
“You gonna shoot some redcoats?”
“Where’s your well-regulated militia?”
“What the hell, man?”
Questions aside, a musket can come in handy. When I arrive at my local coffee shop at the same time as another customer, he tells me: “You go first. I’m not arguing with someone holding that thing.”
Why am I carrying around a 1795 firearm? Well, it’s because I’m deep into Project Constitution. I’ve pledged to live by the US constitution as strictly and literally as possible. I want to see what it’s like to be the ultimate originalist.
I got the idea after the US supreme court’s latest controversial term. As you might know, it’s the most conservative court in decades. It overturned Roev Wade, saying that the constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. It bolstered gun rights and took power away from the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is, in large part, because several justices adhere to a philosophy called originalism in some form or another. The main gist of originalism is that we should follow the original meaning of the constitution as it was understood when it was first implemented in 1789 (or, if the decision involves one of the constitution’s amendments, whenever that was ratified).
So I figured: what if we took this to its logical endpoint?
To be fair, there are many versions of originalism, and no originalist would go as far as I do. Originalists argue that the constitution doesn’t require you to opt for muskets over modern guns. Instead, a good originalist takes the centuries-old principles of the constitution and applies them to the current day, using history and tradition as a guide. So the right to privacy, originally meant to stop the constable banging on your door, now applies to your smartphone.
Fair enough. But it seems to me – and many other observers – that the court’s originalists can be pretty stingy when it comes to updating, especially if it involves women’s rights, gay rights or environmental regulations. “One of the dangers of originalism is that the people who practise
