On this strange and challenging Fourth of
July I sit for a moment in the splendid site in the universe that is my study,
remembering one of the first passages upon which I exercised my lifelong propensity
for memorization of inspiring and eloquent written expression >>>>>
>>>>>
When
in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among
the powers of the earth that separate and equal station to which the laws of
nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind requires that they declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.
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.
That
to secure these liberties, governments are instituted by men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed;
that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive until these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a
new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness…..
Thirteen years later, the form for
“organizing its powers” to which Thomas Jefferson referred in that brilliant
beginning (and in wordage nearly 25%) of the Declaration of Independence was strongly suggested in the Preamble penned by James Madison in his
even more brilliant Constitution of the
United States of America, also memorized and in this case referenced in the
oration that I delivered in speech contests:
We
the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the general
welfare, and secure these blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America
On this day in 2020, 144 years after the Declaration of Independence was
promulgated, and 131 years after the Constitution,
the power of those documents is strongly suggested by what I assert is very
little need for change in the wording or the principles. As a feminist, I would change “mankind” to
humankind and “men” to people (and as another indication of the brilliance of
the document, we could do so by amendment), and I would be fine with changing
references to Divinity to Nature instead;
as a leftist, nothing else in the Declaration
and nothing at all in the Preamble,
would I change.
After his verbally rollicking beginning,
Jefferson continues to rollick with a long list of abuses by King King George,
a review of what the colonists had done to try to avoid the break, then to make the break with the
declaration that “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent states.”
Only at one place in the Declaration would Jefferson betray his
own perfections and those of his times, that
point at which among his verbal bombs launched at George he writes
He
has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known role of
warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions,
thus ironically presaging the approach that
the nation would take for the “undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes,
and conditions” pertinent to the people assigned the epithet properly assigned
to those who perpetrated the 1930 Indian Removal Act and the 1887 Dawes Act.
Tom, for all of his brilliance, gave part
of himself away on that one.
As to
Madison, his mostly brilliant luster dimmed most abjectly in excluding
“Indians not taxed” and “three-fifths” of all other persons, those latter
constituting that majority of African Americans who could not be counted part
of the “whole number of free persons.”
Very complex and at times virulently
flawed, these idealists who created the world’s most diverse prototype for
contemporary democracy.
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
These reflections lead me to assert that in
the now quite un-United States of 4 July 2020 we are mired not in two but three
national crises:
1
>>>>>> the health threat posed by and
national policy related to COVID-19
2
>>>>>> issues raised by the murder of George
Floyd
3
>>>>>> woeful ignorance, vitiating responses
to the two other crises
…………………………………………………………………………………………
History and historical personages are
complex.
Whatever the truth about the immorality of
the character, the war, and the lifestyle represented by of the people formerly celebrated with statues,
the foundations of those sculpted testimonies to human imperfection were surely
sturdier than the knowledge base of most of those doing the
ripping---
and most of those not inclined to rip are at least as ignorant.
Very hard it is to have a national
discussion about the events and people of history in the absence of one whit of
knowledge about the events and people history.
………………………………………………………………………………..
I wonder what will happen if the rippers and
the erasers turn their attention to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Methinks that there are few visual
recognitions of James Madison to be ripped asunder; and in perfect irony, Madison is at once the
foremost architect of national democracy who ever breathed and mostly unknown
as to his brilliance and accomplishment by the American public. Those who named the capital of Wisconsin must
have had some idea, but most of the current residents of the city most likely
do not. And most of the national
citizenry could not even cite the capital of Wisconsin or its 49 companions
across land and sea.
By contrast, there is quite a bit of visual
testimony to Jefferson, and many a name.
Given that the
architects of the nation that would in time, on the basis of constitutional
amendments and the capacity for legislative innovation, tend toward
increasing democratization, were all proponents of slavery who launched a
nation upon racist assumptions and a limited notion of “the people,”
what will we do with that?
Does the citizenry even know enough to feel as
it should a wrenching cognitive dissonance?
What will be ripped up and cast asunder?
More importantly, will such an ignorant
citizenry as ours have any idea at all as to what to create in the absence of
the values and the system implicitly or explicitly debased as the symbols are
un-based?
I’ll watch with a certain agony as destruction
exceeds capacity for construction.
But as a leftist activist for overhauled K-12
education, I am busy now and will be for many moons doing what I can to put
ideas before a citizenry that I intend to make knowledgeable enough to understand
as I do my own ripping asunder--- of the
current ideological framework of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment