There are many goals in constitutional and civil education the world over one is to communicate to the citizens- the mandates , the principles, the laws, rules, regulations in the national constitution. The other, but a rare one, is to communicate to the citizen the philosophical values underlying the national constitution. There are many reasons for doing this. The question is do we understand the philosophical assumptions which are expressed in constitutions?

How much does the constitution and its philosophy express social and political values? Could there be an unconscious warfare going on between the values in the constitution and the values ascribed to it by the elites and masses? There are many ways of understanding a constitution, among them as an instrument of class warfare, a codification of morals, a condition for ceasefire between warring groups (say, a peace treaty) or an attempt to distinguish between the recommended and the commanded in national civil morality.

A constitution or a legal regime can also be a codified theory of justice. A concept of justice deals with the distribution of material and psycho-spiritual “good” between individuals and communities. The good in question includes economic issues while psycho-spiritual good includes power, honour, reputation, sex, security, health and the products of culture creativity. Seen from this perspective and constitution is an expression of national conscience. It sets our minimal moral unanimity. The notion of justice, decency and fairness articulated in the constitutions should concur with the action of the majority excluding psychopath, eccentrics or geniuses. But if they are violent in conflict, then we have a case of national constitutional neurosis or national moral political cognitional dissonance. Then the national socio-political conscience is a house divided.

When communities rule out certain presidents from certain communities and from certain tribes, they are giving voice to a concept of “just distribution of power” that is conflict of  “electoral justice”, which demands only majority consent expressed in a free individual (not tribal) vote. When a citizen  invokes “past individuals and ethnic suffering as the qualification for powers  he/ she is in conflict with the concept of majority mandate as the requirement for power from liberal democratic philosophy. What is to be noted that these utterances and practices are not the acts of a political lunatic fringe but seem to elicit sympathy from the majority of our world citizens

Perhaps it would be correct at this point to borrow some concepts from psychologist Sigmund Freud to help us understand ourselves. The Freudian idea of the mind assert that we experience ourselves at three levels . The conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious. The conscious mind constitutes clearly stated values and beliefs. The subconscious level includes the vaguely known while the unconscious mind constitute the realm of self-ignorance- our unknown conscience.

When the divergence between these planes of self-awareness grows too much, the individuals become destabilized, in neurosis or schizophrenia. I believe that the national political conscience may also be said to operate at three levels. The national constitutional conscious the national constitutional sub conscious and national constitutional unconscious. The national constitutional conscious deals with our cleary expressed values the subconscious with vaguely felt sociopolitical values while the unconscious refers to the unarticulated, but less powerful values. What needs to be understood is that the values expressed is liberal democratic constitution are not instinctive or natural to man. Their reasons are not obvious.

To the uncritical mind, they may even appear to be morally offensive. Why should one allow a person the freedom to express what is untrue? Why should the individual, and not the tribe, be the major legal consideration? Why should you pretend that a person you have caught stealing is innocent until “proved” guilty? Why should you give your enemy or opponent a fair chance  to organize himself and allow him/her to ruin you in business or politics?

World over, few understand the philosophical reasoning of the founder of democratic ideals. Even those who understand the regulation and practices may not understand the reasons/philosophies behind them. We are therefore in the grip of national constitutional psychosis.

But we agree that resistance to constitutional values goes beyond philosophical understanding. Nevertheless, part of the method to solve the problem lies in communicating to the majority of world citizens reasoning behind the practices and regulations stipulated in liberal democratic constitutions. We urgently need a long term therapeutic educational programme of constitutional philosophy.