Our Ms. Brooks: Revolutionaries
Earlier today, I posted the full text of the Declaration of Independence, which I try to remember to do each July 4th. I consider it one of the most amazing documents in the history of humankind, and with good reason. There it was, drafted by a bunch of DFHs in the face of a far superior power, but those brave men didn't care. It was what they believed, believed so much that they were willing to die for the principles it espoused. A few years later many of those same people would produce another remarkable and historically significant document, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the world was forever changed. With those two documents, the goal and the marching orders for those of the species were put in place by those who believed it was time for the next step in evolution.
It's pretty hard to imagine the kind of courage those founders had these days. We're told that the rights that those men fought for are really only contingent. If a few sociopaths with box cutters attack the nation, all the rights enumerated in these two documents can be ignored. Our telephones can be tapped, we can be detained forever without a remedy, we can be forced to pay for wars we've been lied into, and we can be shut out of jobs if we don't vote or worship a particular way.
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, columnist Rosa Brooks did a brilliant job in pointing out the incongruity of the two historical periods, so brilliant that I'm going to go beyond what is probably fair use in quoting.
...the Constitution also doesn't contain any footnotes that say, "Note to our descendants: This Constitution is intended for easy times only. At the first sign of trouble, feed this document to your dog. We won't mind. We only fought a war for it."
This Fourth of July, celebrate by rereading the Declaration of Independence, created by more or less the same crowd who brought us the Constitution, 11 years and one war later. Remember it? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Wild stuff! To the founders, "all men" have "unalienable rights" -- not just U.S. citizens in the continental United States. (If the founding fathers were around today, Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani would pillory them as limp-wristed, latte-drinking, soft-on-terror liberals.)
It was treasonous stuff too. When the Declaration of Independence was drafted, there were no U.S. citizens: Instead, there were about 2.5 million scrappy Colonists who legally owed allegiance to the king of England, George III. But they went to war -- over the little matter of freedom, law and unalienable, God-given rights.
Among their grievances against King George, the rebellious Colonists complained that he ignored the will of their representative bodies, refused "his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers" and "affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power." The Colonists also objected to the denial of "the benefit of trial by jury" and the king's practice of avoiding the inconveniences of due process by transporting prisoners "beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses." (George III would have loved Guantanamo.)
The founders had a word for governments that respected rights only arbitrarily and selectively: tyranny. The signers of the declaration took rights seriously. They wrote, "For the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." That wasn't mere rhetoric. Technically, the signers were all traitors, liable to be executed for treason. And they accepted that standing up for rights means taking some real risks. ...
The Constitution is no "suicide pact," but the people who founded this nation risked war, prison and death for the sake of unalienable human rights. Their values guided us through good times and bad, through the Civil War, two world wars and the Cold War. But today, some Americans seem happy to discard those same precious values in the name of "security."
Sometimes I wonder: If the founders could have foreseen this, would they have bothered to fight the Revolutionary War?
Yes, Rosa, I believe they would have. The ideas and ideals were that important. We just have to find a way engender that passion in our own breasts.
It's pretty hard to imagine the kind of courage those founders had these days. We're told that the rights that those men fought for are really only contingent. If a few sociopaths with box cutters attack the nation, all the rights enumerated in these two documents can be ignored. Our telephones can be tapped, we can be detained forever without a remedy, we can be forced to pay for wars we've been lied into, and we can be shut out of jobs if we don't vote or worship a particular way.
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, columnist Rosa Brooks did a brilliant job in pointing out the incongruity of the two historical periods, so brilliant that I'm going to go beyond what is probably fair use in quoting.
...the Constitution also doesn't contain any footnotes that say, "Note to our descendants: This Constitution is intended for easy times only. At the first sign of trouble, feed this document to your dog. We won't mind. We only fought a war for it."
This Fourth of July, celebrate by rereading the Declaration of Independence, created by more or less the same crowd who brought us the Constitution, 11 years and one war later. Remember it? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Wild stuff! To the founders, "all men" have "unalienable rights" -- not just U.S. citizens in the continental United States. (If the founding fathers were around today, Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani would pillory them as limp-wristed, latte-drinking, soft-on-terror liberals.)
It was treasonous stuff too. When the Declaration of Independence was drafted, there were no U.S. citizens: Instead, there were about 2.5 million scrappy Colonists who legally owed allegiance to the king of England, George III. But they went to war -- over the little matter of freedom, law and unalienable, God-given rights.
Among their grievances against King George, the rebellious Colonists complained that he ignored the will of their representative bodies, refused "his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers" and "affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power." The Colonists also objected to the denial of "the benefit of trial by jury" and the king's practice of avoiding the inconveniences of due process by transporting prisoners "beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses." (George III would have loved Guantanamo.)
The founders had a word for governments that respected rights only arbitrarily and selectively: tyranny. The signers of the declaration took rights seriously. They wrote, "For the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." That wasn't mere rhetoric. Technically, the signers were all traitors, liable to be executed for treason. And they accepted that standing up for rights means taking some real risks. ...
The Constitution is no "suicide pact," but the people who founded this nation risked war, prison and death for the sake of unalienable human rights. Their values guided us through good times and bad, through the Civil War, two world wars and the Cold War. But today, some Americans seem happy to discard those same precious values in the name of "security."
Sometimes I wonder: If the founders could have foreseen this, would they have bothered to fight the Revolutionary War?
Yes, Rosa, I believe they would have. The ideas and ideals were that important. We just have to find a way engender that passion in our own breasts.
Labels: Citizenship, Democracy, DFHs
posted by Diane at 2:00 PM
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