Over at Big Hollywood, Andrew Breitbart makes the oft-noted observation that modern-day bills such as the stimulus bill and the Cap and Trade bill just passed are huge (973 and 1200 pages, respectivel) — while the ostensive ultimate law of the land, the Constitution, is only 12 pages long.
Sadly, he does not grasp that the difference is due entirely to the fact that the Constitution was and is a magnificent expression of principled thought, while modern laws are expressions of pragmatism. From an epistemological standpoint, the Constitution is like an artifact of a long-vanished, advanced civilization, incomprehensible in its nature, origins or workings to the primitives who venerate it without comprehending it.
I am reminded of the third and most famous of Arthur C. Clarke’s “three laws“: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  What we are seeing dramatized now, here and elsewhere, is the philosophical root of what Clarke said: any sufficiently advanced product of principled thought is, in the eyes of pragmatists, indistinguishable from luck.
Epistemological Primitivism in Action II — The New Clarion // Jul 20, 2009 at 8:16 pm
[…] an earlier post, I characterized pragmatists as “epistemological primitives”. Today I have two groups […]
Epsistemological Primitivism in Action III — The New Clarion // Sep 22, 2009 at 11:11 am
[…] view of the U.S. Constitution, in particular the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, as an example of that epistemological primitivism we all know and love as pragmatism. In that post, I linked an article that outlines the legal […]
Wide as an Ocean, Shallow as a Puddle: Epistemological Primitivism IV — The New Clarion // Feb 15, 2010 at 1:05 am
[…] In the past, I have illustrated how pragmatism cripples the intellect, especially among conservatives. Today’s case, however, is not one of the relatively mediocre Internet pundits that we’ve seen before, but is one of conservatism’s best pretenders to the intellectual mantle: Anthony Daniels, perhaps better known as Theodore Dalrymple. […]