The Cult of the Structure

On this controversial and provocative ebook, Mary Anne Franks examines the skinny line between constitutional constancy and constitutional fundamentalism. The Cult of the Structure reveals how deep fundamentalist strains in each conservative and liberal American thought preserve the Structure within the service of white male supremacy.

Constitutional fundamentalists learn the Structure selectively and self-servingly. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Structure elevate sure constitutional rights above all others, profit probably the most highly effective members of society, and undermine the integrity of the doc as a complete. The conservative fetish for the Second Modification (enforced by teams such because the NRA) supplies an apparent instance of constitutional fundamentalism; the liberal fetish for the First Modification (enforced by teams such because the ACLU) is much less apparent however no much less influential. Financial and civil libertarianism have more and more merged to provide a deregulatory, “free-market” method to constitutional rights that achieves fullest expression within the idealization of the Web. The worship of weapons, speech, and the Web within the identify of the Structure has blurred the boundaries between conduct and speech and between veneration and violence.

However the Structure itself comprises the antidote to fundamentalism. The Cult of the Structure lays naked the darkish, antidemocratic penalties of constitutional fundamentalism and urges readers to take the Structure significantly, not selectively.