Over the period of the election, I was reading a great book by George Weigel entitiled The Cube and the Cathedral, most of which centers around what Weigel calls the “historical amnesia” of the secular left’s perspective on European (and sic Western) culture. So it’s with a chuckle that – in the aftermath of the French rejection of the EU Constitution – I read this particular regret from its prinicple architect and his efforts to suppress the text:
It was a crucial mistake to send out the entire constitution to every French voter, the architect of the EU’s first constitution Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has said in an interview.
…
One crucial mistake was to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter, said Mr Giscard.
Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac already in March: “I said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it'”.
“It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text”.
I could only imagine what we as Americans would say to a similar statement about our own Constitution. Sure it might sound trite (how many bills in Congress would the average American understand?), but this is a perfect reflection of the narrow complexities a more socialist orientation offers by nature, and why a legal framework rooted in the natural law perspective offers the freedom minus the legal gymnastics.