Happy Independence Day! I love the United States of America, although I would never say: “My country right or wrong”. I have criticized the USA vehemently many times when I thought it was wrong. But when the USA is wrong, it means that I, and those who think like me, have not succeeded in getting enough people to agree with us. Sure, I know how big money, and politicians’ need to get re-elected corrupts the situation, but we are all free to struggle for what we believe. Since the assassinations of the sixties, the Viet Nam War and Watergate, many younger Americans have lost track of what a positive force the USA has been during most of the time since its founding. In and after both the First and Second World Wars the USA played essentially good roles. Since our beginning people from all over the world have been willing to undergo great dangers and hardship to reach the USA and very few have wanted to leave. The American Revolution started not to win independence, but to restore the ancient liberties of Englishmen. To think of fighting against the greatest power in the World, was a daring idea. Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful language in the Declaration of Independence (improved a bit by Benjamin Franklin) has been an inspiration to all those around the world who have struggled for freedom. Our founding fathers were a remarkable group of men. No one is perfect and about half of them owned slaves. They could not imagine that women, or poor, un-landed men should have equal rights to those of their own class. In the New York Review of Books, I recently read a review of the book “On Constitutional Disobedience” by Louis Michael Seidman. The book asks the obvious but thought-provoking question: Why should we still pay attention to the Constitution written more than 200 years ago by men (no women) whose world-view was fundamentally different from ours? These men saw the independence they had by then won in danger of falling apart under the Articles of Confederation. They had reason to fear for their own lives, liberty and property if they could not find agreement on a stronger government and convince enough of the political class to adopt it. Thus they adopted the shameful, but essential, idea of counting Negro Slaves as 3/5 of a person. They postponed for twenty years the government’s power to regulate the slave trade even internationally. It was a triumph to agree on a document in four months which was approved by 11 of the 13 states in a year and a half after tremendous effort. They wisely agreed on a procedure for amendment, which has kept the venerable old document a bit more up-to-date. Why should we bind ourselves to this quaint old document? Surely the right group of modern people could improve on it. But there is the rub! How will we choose the right group? Even if I could do it alone, I would not know who to choose. Substitute for me one of the best informed political thinkers of our age. I do not believe such a person would feel confident of the proper committee. But of course the biggest problem is that different supremely well informed people would choose disjoint sets of law givers. It is not uncommon in life to prefer to live with the devils you know than with other unknown devils. Thus I will continue to support living with a flawed Supreme Court interpreting an antiquated Constitution, written to gain acceptance in very different times. I end with my original thought on this Independence Day. I love the United States of America. In particular I feel so lucky to have been born here.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 23:56:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015