In Politico's "Right's weapon: Constitutional force," we again sense the perils of fundamentalist thought -- in this case political -- which can be construed even further in religious terms: as denominational ideology having degenerated into sectarian radicalism.
[W]hile the Constitution is often invoked, and even misquoted, for all manner of conservative causes, perhaps the truest meaning of the new phrase constitutional conservatism is found in the broad, imaginative and sometimes quirky new efforts to hem in the power of the federal government....
[T]he challenges to the health care reform law are just the most visible sign of a broad, national flowering of state efforts to find shelter from the federal government in sometimes-neglected corners of the Constitution that touch conventional political hot buttons such as immigration and gun control, and exotic ones, such as citizenship and currency.
And get this: "there are even proposals for states to begin minting their own currencies."
The Constitution, "often invoked and even misquoted" (hello, Bart Ehrman) -- the political fundamentalist's attempt to embrace and celebrate its most expansive language only to justify the narrowest and pettiest of platforms.
Somewhere, if there is a somewhere, the Founders are no doubt meeting with other Scripturalists, asking, Where did we go wrong? How is it possible, or indeed is it possible, to write general guidelines for human conduct in which the literal won't be misapplied as figurative and the figurative literal?
But of course that presupposes a human community of fundamental integrity.