Generates apathy

The argument

This argument concerns what an unamendable constitution does to the civic life conducted under it, rather than to any particular provision it protects. The reasoning begins from the connection between participation and consequence. People engage in the democratic process because engagement can change something: the point of arguing, organising and voting is that the arrangements under which one lives are, in principle, open to revision by the people living under them. An unamendable constitution withdraws that possibility at the most fundamental level. If citizens cannot modify and amend any and all of society's principal values as they see fit, then the questions that matter most are settled in advance and permanently, and no amount of persuasion or mobilisation can reopen them. What follows is a reduced incentive to participate at all. Deliberation about a closed question has no object, so the effort of forming and defending a view on it yields nothing. Rational citizens who recognise this will direct their attention elsewhere, and the result is that healthy public debate is replaced by apathy and indifference — not because people have become incapable of it, but because the structure has removed the reason for it. The harm identified is therefore twofold. Democratically, a population that has disengaged cannot supply the consent and scrutiny that legitimate government depends on, so the constitution's own authority is hollowed out over time. Intellectually, a society that no longer debates its principal values loses the capacity to examine and articulate them, and becomes impoverished in exactly the respect the entrenched provisions were meant to safeguard. An arrangement that produces indifference toward the foundations of public life cannot be described as serving popular rule. Because it generates apathy and stifles participation, an unamendable constitution is undemocratic.

Context

Having aspects of a societies’ legislative and social values of limits generates apathy among the electorate and leads to decreased democratic participation.

Premises

Counter-arguments

This generally isn’t true. The mere fact that some constitutional elements are unamendable makes them the target of intense public debate. The fact that all Americans are guaranteed the right to bear arms is guaranteed in its unamendable constitution (the extent to which the US Constitution is unamendable is contentious yet beyond the scope of this question) has not meant that discussions surrounding gun rights have vanished and the population has become indifferent. The opposite has occurred. Public debate intensifies and the constitutional element becomes a focal point.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Unamendable provisions in constitutions become the focal point of democratic debate, not a source of apathy.