In a letter to the editor, someone asked why the Constitution is not a “living document.” The Constitution is a “changeable” document; but it changes only with formal, national, political consensus and approval of the people. The Constitution assures freedom to our people and life to our culture but it is not a living thing. We must understand what the words in this document mean.

What is a word? A word is a symbol that conveys a concept. Once a word is used in writing, it can neither be separated nor changed from the underlying concept which it represented to the writer(s). If the underlying concepts conveyed by words changed with time and culture, most literature and other writings created in the distant past would have no meaning today because the culture that understood them has evolved into a different culture with different concepts for the words that were used.

For example: For most of its life in English, the primary meaning of “gay” was “joyful,” “carefree,” “bright and showy” in speech and literature. Today “gay” is primarily associated with homosexuality. So, when a person from the culture of the 2010s hears “gay” the concepts brought to mind are entirely different from the culture of the 1930s. Furthermore, a person from the culture of the 2010s would most likely have a distorted view of what the “Gay Nineties” was really about.

Hopefully, a thoughtful person can grasp the concept I have tried to present here and generalize it to apprehend a cogent understanding of why the Constitution is not a living document but must be understood using the concepts of the culture in which it was written.

The concepts of the founding fathers are represented by words that may have different concepts in our current culture. Not only that, but each amendment must also be understood in the context of the culture of its time.