I had the chance to overhear a discussion the other day about how the
country has deviated from the original intent of the Constitution. He argument was that we should return and to
the original interpretation of our founding fathers. This is a common argument by conservative
Republicans and, most currently, the Tea Party movement who has sought to
legitimize their political position by laying claim to the historical meaning
of the United States Constitution. Many Tea Party members subscribe to a
literal reading of the national charter as a way of bolstering their opposition
to the evolution of this democracy, and by the way, to provide credibility to
their opposition, among others, to deficit spending, bank bailouts and
President Obama’s health care plan. These people even propose that all legislation
passed by Congress should specify the precise clause in the Constitution giving
Congress the power to pass such a law. My
thought as I listen to this discussion is that these people have no sense of
history, no understanding of the evolutionary nature and adaptability of this
democracy and wondered whether they were simply pawns of “those that have” in
class struggle between those that have and those that have not – the epic struggle
in this country and in the world.
The Constitution, as Justice Thurgood Marshall indicated in 1987
“was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and
momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional
government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we
hold as fundamental today.” “The Constitution
is a work in progress and will remain a story worth telling,” so summarizes Ms
Greenhouse in her Op-Ed in the New York Times on Christmas Day, 2013. The U.S. Constitution has its basis on Magna
Carta and the freedoms it declares. In
the case of the Magna Carta it was the freedoms and rights for the Barons with
land and Noblemen, not the common people.
In the U.S. Constitution, it was the freedoms and rights for white
property owners, also not the common people.
If applied to current times, that would translate to people of wealth –
corporations, and in general, the “one percent.
Is there any doubt why such conservative Republicans would want to
return to the original interpretation of the constitution?
The evolution and changes to the constitution has both been
forward and backward depending on the position of people in Congress and also
on whether there is a “right” leaning Supreme Court. Take for example the 15th Amendment, it prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a
citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or
previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the
third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. It took 95 years and some fancy string
pulling from President Johnson to make it happen through the Voting Rights Act
of 1965! So Justice Thurgood Marshall
was correct, it has taken a long time for the government to obtain a respect
for individual freedoms and human rights.
And, not to let it go to our heads on the wisdom and progress of our
democratic evolution, but in June of this year, the Conservative leaning
“Roberts Supreme Court” declared Section 4 of this Voting Rights Act
unconstitutional.
Section 4 contains a "coverage
formula" that determines which jurisdictions are subject to the Act's
other special provisions that eliminated the practice of limiting voting
through discriminatory practices by certain States and Counties. The map below shows where these
discriminatory practices were more prevalent in 1964. So guess what these States and Counties have
begun to do ever since the repeal of Section 4?
They have begun to implement discriminatory practices again. And guess what? This practice has begun to expand, often is
subtle ways, and this expansion is all in “red” States!
It bothers me when I overhear this type
of discussion about returning to our “founding fathers” interpretation of the
constitution. Granted, they created
something viable to work from, but I don’t think they indented to create a
know-all be-all basis for government for all future time, they were revolutionaries
not the gods of social structure!
The only conclusion I can reach, given
that none of the people having this discussion is in the 1% of the people of
wealth, is that people like to “regurgitate” what they here in Fox News and
biased radio commentators and never bother to investigate and analyze and
really take political position best reflective of their true beliefs, status
and desires. These people do more damage
to themselves and to the country than they can possibly realize.
