The rhetoric of liberty

I'm watching a panel on C-SPAN with Justices Kennedy, O'Conner, and Breyer in front of group of international jurists. Yes, I'm that lame. And Justice Kennedy was talking about the difference between The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as documents. He made a really good point about reading both of them. You can't really read the Constitution from beginning to end without your mind wandering to history and context and minutae. While you can read the Declaration from beginning to end without your mind wandering from the words in front of you. That gets to an important point about the nature of the two and the ways that one must engage them when reading and applying their principles to the world around you. The Declaration was designed for a particular rhetorical purpose, it's supposed to be read and it's supposed to make you angrier and angrier at the British Parliament. And it works. Hell, it worked. But the Constitution was written, was designed, to be mulled over, piece by piece. It require recourse to context and history. It must be considered, not simply read. The words must be integrated with the world around you. It must be so. A lot of inimitable people got together, wrote and ratified both. We must believe that these rhetorical difference in two documents are meant to be so. The Declaration is exactly that, a great yawlp of freedom (to borrow from Whitman). While the Constiution is an intellectual challenge: Here we set out these principles now go and use them as the crossbeams in the structure of a society to be build to the plan of liberty. It demands interpretation while the Declaration demands only attention. This leads to two different actions. The Declaration creates rebellion (which is a nice thing from time to time), while the Constitution creates civilization which is something to which we must pay continuing and evolving attention.