IMO the constitution is that important to Americans, because they don’t really have tradition or culture to draw from. The USA is a very young country. Yes I know that technically modern day Germany, Italy and others are younger. However, those countries have many centuries of tradition and culture to draw from.
Pretty much every country has some form of ‘the highest law’, which is intentionally kept rather abstract. Afterall it is the framework for more specific laws to fill in and regulate daily life. But an identity and feeling of self for the USA pretty much started with the civil war. Which lead to the writing of the constitution, their ‘highest law’. The constitution is part of the creation mythos for the USA. A marking point of when people start to think of themselves as Americans, a sovereign entity. Since the USA, compared to other countries, doesn’t have much more culture to draw from, the relative importance of that one piece is inevitably higher.
IMO the constitution is that important to Americans, because they don’t really have tradition or culture to draw from. The USA is a very young country. Yes I know that technically modern day Germany, Italy and others are younger. However, those countries have many centuries of tradition and culture to draw from.
Pretty much every country has some form of ‘the highest law’, which is intentionally kept rather abstract. Afterall it is the framework for more specific laws to fill in and regulate daily life. But an identity and feeling of self for the USA pretty much started with the civil war. Which lead to the writing of the constitution, their ‘highest law’. The constitution is part of the creation mythos for the USA. A marking point of when people start to think of themselves as Americans, a sovereign entity. Since the USA, compared to other countries, doesn’t have much more culture to draw from, the relative importance of that one piece is inevitably higher.