August 29, 2020 – Un-conventional wisdom

These last few weeks have shown us in fairly stark contrast what the two major political parties see, want, and hope for, both in November and beyond. Their respective conventions—which I admittedly could only tolerate/consume small portions of—spoke volumes to those who would care to listen.

In short, each side sees the other are duplicitous, evil, and as a threat to the very fabric of this nation…and from where I sit, they’re both right.

However, the problem, IMO, wasn’t these two conventions, but rather, the Constitutional Convention. Yes, the one in 1787. That’s where the nexus of the problems arose. Because both of today’s political parties pick and choose when to take the Constitution literally, and when to take it logically, as in, “updated for modern interpretation.” More on this later.

I read Thomas Edsall’s NY Times opinion piece entitled “I Fear That are Witnessing the End of American Democracy as we Know it” the other day. Touching article, well-written. But I disagree whole-heartedly with the title. We’re not witnessing the end of American Democracy—we’re re-witnessing the beginning of American Democracy, all over again! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/opinion/trump-republican-convention-racism.html

For example, the Electoral College was a concession to the South to get them to agree to whole notion of a Constitution (to replace the obviously dysfunctional stop-gap—the Articles of Confederation). The “EC” (and its corresponding clincher, the 3/5ths Compromise) gave the South way more representative power than the North wanted to concede to it—for example, Virginia wound up with 12 Electors out of the 46 total Electoral College votes. But the EC was a means to an end. It got everyone to sign off. In fact, the framers had no idea that the EC would actually produce a winner, and figured that, once the EC failed to do so, the House of Representatives would actually select the President. That was the plan! (And it has happened , but not since 1824.) This whole EC idea was supposed to be a concession to get things started, and then the “real” decision would come from those few, wealthy, powerful White men who were already elected to Congress (via one vote per state, but you get the point). This was before political parties even existed, and before there was any reason to believe that only two main candidates would be competing for the position. To be clear, to this day, the rules say that the Electoral College gets one shot at deciding the winner, and that if no one person has the clear majority of EC votes, then the House gets to (s)elect the President.

So that brings me back to the notion of literal versus modern interpretation of the Constitution, and the Declaration of independence. That whole preamble thingy, you know, the “We the People…a more perfect Union…and the Declaration’s opening, “We hold these truths…all MEN were created equal”…yadda-yadda. Who do you think they were referring to? And that annoying Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, with its “right to bear arms.” What are we to make of these phrases? Well, like that book that many of you refer to as “The Bible,” (clearly it is, at best, A Bible, not The Bible, but more on that another time), you can find whatever you’re looking for!

So, if you’re a Right-wing, Trump-ist/Republican, you can find solace in the literal interpretation of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” among other things. So, yeah, you can point your AK-47 at a group of Black Lives Matter protesters, because, you know, the 2^nd Amendment says it’s okay. But does it make any sense at all that protection of the ownership of the muskets and bayonets of 1787 were meant as guarantees that we can buy AK-47s, Uzis, or “bump-stocks” for the semi-automatic weapons of 2020?! Of course not. The 1^st Amendment guarantees me freedom of peaceable assembly, which one could argue, means that I can “peaceably assemble” by any means of transportation I choose, no? But that doesn’t mean that it’s against the Constitution to require me to have a driver’s license, or to post speed limits, or to require me to have liability insurance on my car, does it? Those impositions on my right to peaceably assemble seem reasonable now, right? Because we understand that the technology has increased so dramatically that it makes no sense to apply 18^th-century transportation realities to 21^st-century transportation. But I mean, literally, maybe it does mean that requiring driver’s licenses violates my 1^st Amendment rights, but no one is making that argument, are they?

At the same time, though, the literal interpretation of “All men are created equal,” which modern-day Democrats hold onto as justification for treating everyone fairly, was clearly not what the 1776 document had in mind. They didn’t mean to include: women, Blacks, Native Americans (a term that didn’t even exist back then, btw), etc. No, they meant Wealthy White Men…period! And the modern-day Republicans mean what the Founders meant!

So, did Black Lives Matter “back in the day” when these documents were written? Um, not so much. Like I said (and you well know) only three-fifths of each Black person was counted for purposes of: the Electoral College, House representation and resource allocation, but of course, none of us (Blacks) could actually vote or be elected to, you know, represent ourselves, anyway, so, whatever. And how many of today’s Republicans do you think would vote against re-implementing anything in this paragraph? I mean, as I’ve mentioned before, it was only 20 years ago that Alabama voted to allow inter-racial marriage…by a vote of 59-to-41! (Hey, if a law re-instituting slavery was on the ballot this year, what would you think the results would be, especially in the South? Asking for a friend…)

So, who’s right and who’s wrong? Should we listen to what the Founders said, or what they meant? We are the nation that said “All men are created equal,” but really only meant it for Wealthy White men. Maybe, what we really need is another Constitutional Convention! Maybe we need to require one ever 100 years if not sooner, in order to reflect the actual, applicable realities of the technology, the demographics, the economics, and the international environment we find ourselves in. And hey, if this “American Experiment” isn’t working, maybe it’s time to move on! Why should we assume that this enormous nation, which came to be by the quasi-genocidal elimination of its original occupants (the modern-day Canaanites, Hittites, etc?), is somehow “guaranteed” in perpetuity? If we can’t get enough of us to agree on the direction we should move in—if we can’t get enough of us to agree on whether we should follow what our Founders said, versus what some of us would like to think they meant, then maybe it’s time to say, in the words of the NFL, “upon further review, the ruling on the field (of the Civil War) is over-turned!” (The South will not be charged with a timeout…y’all can go!)

What say ye?