[cryout-multi][cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/2″]
BS ‘n’ About…
A 21st Century Constitutional Convention
In the early days of this enlightened experiment in democracy we call America, our Founding Fathers put aside their differences, called a Constitutional Convention, and worked together to put down on paper the guiding principles by which we govern ourselves to this day. Acknowledging that they were fallible and that government was an evolving process, they included provisions to amend that Constitution. This has resulted in the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage, not to mention prohibition and its repeal.
Here at the beginning of the 21st Century, the very principles that were laid down by our Founding Fathers are at risk. The very freedoms which our forefathers died for have been signed away by a Washington that increasingly views us as ‘They, the people…’.
Need proof? Look no further than the 2008 elections. We could have sworn we voted for the guys who were going to ignore the military-industrial lobbyists and bring our boys, and girls, home. We could have sworn we voted for CHANGE! Instead we got business as usual.
America is no longer a representative democracy where those we elect go to Washington to represent our interests. That is impossible as long as party partisanship rules Washington. …as long as Hollywood democrats vote the exact same slate as Detroit democrats, as long as Westchester Republicans vote the exact same slate as Mississippi Republicans. The only thing our representatives are representing is themselves.
America is no longer about “We, the People”. Homeland Security has turned us into a virtual police state that has the potential to be much more effective at protecting ‘them’ from ‘us’ than ‘us’ from ‘them’. The Patriot Act defines a terrorist as anyone who incites others to violence against the government. What about Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that the tree of liberty needs watered with the blood of patriots on occasion? What is the difference between a patriot and a terrorist, when it really gets down to it? The implications are truly terrifying.
So, if America is no longer a representative democracy, just what are we? …an oligarchy of special interests? …a military-industrial junta? …a Wall Street Corpocracy? …a theocracy of Armageddon-focused judgementalism? The answer is yes: We are a little bit of all these things. But we are no longer a democracy.
So what are we going to do about it? What would Andrew Jackson have done about the banking fiasco? What would Ben Franklin have to say about the massive disrespect we’ve been showing toward our allies of late? What would Thomas Jefferson be doing about an increasingly imperial federal government? How would the Sons of Liberty respond to the Patriot Act? And last, but not least: WWGWD?
America is unique in the history of nations primarily because that man, George Washington, walked away from power and its trappings in service to an ideal. That ideal has grown weaker over time, but it is not yet dead.
Virtually every time we have stood for our ideals in this country, it was a minority that did the standing, arrayed against the forces of stagnation and complacency. Change is never easy: Easy is assuming that tomorrow will be a function of today. Easy is assuming that tomorrow will take care of itself.
But history shows that it rarely works that way. If it did we’d have the Queen on our one-dollar bill. Our Founding Fathers threw a revolution over a lot less government intervention into our lives than we suffer from today. We hung Nazis for torturing prisoners. We threw the ‘60’s over a war we didn’t want to be in. We hounded Richard Nixon from office for the kind of self-serving espionage that we obscenely call the Patriot Act.
Our democracy is badly in need of a tune-up, if not a complete overhaul, if we are to have any hope of celebrating a tricentennial of the values upon which we were founded. Wahington is not going to fix the problem because Washington is the problem. This is not an indictment of the individuals we send there to represent us as much as it is of the culture and precedent that awaits them upon their arrival. When our Founding Fathers first showed up at the malarial swamp we now call our nation’s capital, they couldn’t wait to get their work done so they could go “home”. For them, home was back among their neighbors and the constituents that elected them.
Nowadays we have a professional political class that thinks of Washington as home and the areas they represent as just a means to the end of staying in Washington. For many of them it has been decades since they truly felt at home anywhere outside the beltway. That is why no lie is too big, no campaign contribution too dirty, no alliance too shady, if it will keep them in office. And if Iowa, or Pennsylvania, or Texas dares… …dares! …to vote them out of office, they just sign up with a lobbyist for big bucks and stay in Washington!
Democracy is a bit like playing a football game that allows the players to change the rules in the middle of the game. Pretty soon the game has lost all meaning for those of us out here in the stands. That is why games have a pre-determined set of rules and impartial umpires.
This is why America is badly in need of a 21st Century Constitutional Convention. Over two hundred years of special interests, gerrymandering, lobbyists, earmarks, and Presidential signing orders have made a mockery of the Constitution as laid down by our Founding Fathers.
Washington has turned into everything our ancestors fought to overthrow. Every election cycle we seem to end up with the least qualified candidate as our President. The Supreme Court seems to think corporations ought to have all the rights of a citizen with none of the responsibilities. Congress has spent us into a debt so staggering that it dooms any hope our grandkids might have had to achieve ‘The American Dream’.
America has lost its way. We have become a nation of greedy, selfish spendthrifts who think it is our right, our God-given right, to consume half the world’s wealth while doing only ten percent of the work. What would our grandparents say? What would our Founding Fathers say?
We, the People need to start making a stand. We need to demand that we return to a government ‘of, by, and for the people’. We need to assemble a non-partisan commission of our best and brightest to streamline the unwieldy monster that our government has become. We need to make ours a government accountable to the people, not just the lawyers and the rich guys. We need to quit being played off against each other in an us versus them, red versus blue, kind of way. Nowhere in our most sacred papers did our Founding Fathers say “We, Some of the People…”
We need to rewrite the rules by which we govern ourselves.
- [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [/cryout-multi]