……………Flip flop?
At the close of the Constitutional Convention, on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin said, “I confess that there are several parts of this consititution which I do not at present approve. But I am not sure I shall ever approve them, for having lived long [he was 81 at the time], I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better informtation or fuller consideration to change opinions even on important subjects which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more attention to the judgement of others.”
When and why did such thought become political anathema?
I’ve always admired the guys who wrote the Constitution as much for what they left out as what they put in. I’m sure the late 18th Century was not that much different from the early 21st, with respect to people just loving to hear the sound of their own voices and read the glorious prose which poured from their own (quill) pens. It is a landmark achievement that they managed to produce a document so concise and yet so inclusive.
Here’s some “fun trivia” to consider–The US Constitution has 4,418 words (4,543 if you add the signatures). The Bill of Rights has 613 words. The Declaration of Independence has 1,458 words.
By way of contrast, the recently-passed and vetoed “State Children’s Health Insurance Program,” contains a positively staggering 46,866 words, not counting the overblown title. And it’s nothing but a reauthorization bill, albeit an important one.
If Ben Franklin wasn’t sure he could hang in there with a comparatively clean text, just imagine the concern he would feel about trusting his judgement regarding a document more than 10 times longer.
One could argue (except that I would agree with you) that much of the word-weight of anything coming out of congress these days is just an obsessive-compulsive need to make sure that nobody, anywhere, at any time, could possibly feel neglected, insulted or mischaracterized by an official government document.
It isn’t all PC, though. I’ve always entertained the conceit that the Framers of our country’s founding charters held a generally good opinion of the brainpower and resourcefulness of their fellow citizens. They trusted the common sense of the rest of us, and didn’t feel that they had to write fail-safe, fool-proof, impossible-to-miss instructions for the country to follow.
Consider the last paragraph of Article VI in its entirety:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. That’s a fairly simple statement, and crystal-clear. Of course it was written without the benefit of FoxNews, of the Christian Coalition, the Jewish Defense League or the Muslim American Alliance. Ben and the Boys didn’t feel compelled to spell out just what an oath consisted of, or what “support” for the Constitution might look like when it’s at home, or even what they meant by religious Test. We were supposed to be smart enough to reason that out for ourselves. Mostly, I think we are.
But the child-coddling legislators and administrators or the modern era, who seem to believe that a voter-sanctioned trip to Washington D.C. automatically confers a mantle of superior wisdom, doubt that such nebulous matters can safely be left with We the People. Never mind that We the People elected them; or maybe that is the ultimate cynical joke behind the whole thing. Maybe these guys think that anyone so ignorant as to elect them to public office, obviously hasn’t got sense enough to come in out of the rain.
You’ll never catch a modern-day politico admitting that he isn’t an absolute oracle on everything under the sun. But you know, if such a thing did ever happen, the next day’s papers would all have banner headlines screaming, “Sam Senator Admits Abysmal Ignorance,” and We the Voters would be mounting recall petitions and calling in to radio talk shows to vent our surprise and dismay.
Who’s fooling who?
Wasted guy at Coachella 2010 – FRIDAY
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