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the reason i posted that had more to do with what i take to be a basic philosophical difference between the two of us, dk---you tend to negate the social: i see individuals as social effects. the arguments either way depend on the register of information you want to play with---if you're thinking about legal subjects ("the people" is a designation for a legal subjectivity, collective personhood defined around positive and negative attributes such as the rights that the constitution claims we "inherently" bear---even as the reason we "inherently" bear them in the context of this legal order is that the constitution says we inherently bear them) the problem of separating the individual from the social is self-evident.
unless you think the constitution is not itself a social act, that the institution(s) it puts into motion are not social, etc.
maybe you think that the framers of the constitution were god's emissaries and that the constitutional order should therefore be treated as sacrocanct, beyond human understanding, not amenable to interpretation--which would be a consistent position if you yourself were not endlessly advancing interpretations. but you do, and what's more these interpretations operate on eccentric grounds. you pretend they don't because you make references to the constitution as if it meant what you say it means---but if another person does not accept your frame for running interpretations, the claims just lay there on the floor like fish would.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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