ConstitutionLand
First there was Disneyland - the “happiest place on earth”. Tommorowland, Frontierland, Adventureland – sanitized versions of history and the future seen through rose-colored glasses. Designed to entertain while not quite informing, but oh you feel good in there. It wasn’t real, but you wanted it to be because it was better than the real thing.
In the 1970's the major brewers - Miller and Anheuser-Busch, thought it would be a good idea to water down their beer, thus saving costs. It could charge the same as the unwatered down beer which increased profits. It could market these products to take advantage of the growing fitness craze. Everyone remembers "less filling / tastes great". One wonders what dockyard worker complained of beer bloat as the economy slipped into the last great crisis. So we had Beer Lite, The brewers sought to sponsor amusement parks. Busch Gardens was a popular side trip to those visiting the new Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Beerland is born. It looks like beer, but it really wasn't anymore. And it wasn’t quite as good as the real thing.
Back in the 1990s, under the guiding hand of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a partnership was formed with the Disney Company. Rudy vowed to make Times Square family friendly, and got a commitment from Disney to invest in the area, restoring theaters and mounting productions of their popular movies on the live stage. It sparked a "revival" of the theater district as producers found that they could do rewrites of old movies and TV shows, and even popular singers songbooks. These retreads proved commercially popular.
Rudy held up his end of the bargain - cleaning out the prostitutes, drug dealers, homeless and three-card monty scammers. It was called the Disneyfication of Times Square. A prominent New York comedian commented that the place had turned into "Mouseschwitz". All of the criminals and dross were replaced with harmless caricatures of prostitutes and drug dealers, who entertained the tourists with the flavor of "New York" without actually risking any crime or danger. The theaters were filled with entertainment but lacking in that one ingredient that made the New York experience unique - culture.
It was New York Lite. Or NewYorkLand. It was no longer New York City. You could get the same experience at the New York New York Casino in Las Vegas. The tourists ate it up because they didn't know any better. The native New Yorkers appreciated the clean up, but were sad as well that the city had lost its bold flavor, and instead was turned into a bland, homogenized pablum. It looked like New York City, but it really wasn't anymore. It was better, but at what cost?
In 1787, an amazing document was created - The Constitution of the United States. It laid the foundation for what was to become the sole superpower on the planet. A nation in which individual liberty and initiative would create the wealthiest, most powerful nation of all time. A nation so blessed with opportunity that people from all over the planet can look to the poorest among us and choose even that over what their current situation was. They did and they do. The model of a limited government that prioritized individual liberty over governmental control brought this about.
There were, of course, things kicked down the road in 1787. Slavery was chief among them, as well as poor dealings with the Native Americans. All in all though, this unique American experiment was created out of an ideal, and for nearly 150 years chugged along in an effort to make itself, in Abraham Lincoln's words "more perfect".
In the early 1900's social science came into formal being. It argued that if people of expertise would study and apply solutions to problems in the structure of a given society, society could be improved, literally to the point of perfection. In theory, no one could really object to the creation of a society that had no flaws. This was the birth of the Progressive Movement.
There have been great successes in Progressivism. Among them are Woman's suffrage, safer foods, and the granting of racial equality under the law. There have been periods of over-reach as well. It is generally at the times of over-reach that the American public makes its voice heard, and the federal government is forced to respond. Joe McCarthy, LBJ, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were all brought down by a public that was fed up Bill Clinton had his majority in the Congress stripped away in 1994 as the public rejected his agenda in favor of something more measured and practical.
The tug-of-war between individual liberty and a functioning and secure society is always contentious. When one holds to the Constitution, there is a firm basis for agreement in the country. All elected representatives swear an oath to uphold the Constitution because the Founders understood this. It is when we wander from the Constitution that we head into troubled waters.
There has been a gradual erosion of personal liberty that was grudgingly given by the citizenry at the promise of an improved society. Since 9/11 the erosion has increased dramatically. Nowadays we see security cameras on street corners, strangers go through our underwear at the airport, our trash is inspected and sorted, our lawn sprinklers are monitored. Grass height is measured. Political correctness causes us to censor our words. The non-conformist generation tolerates no non-conformity. We are not secure in our persons and our property.
Our liberty is being gnawed at in seemingly little ways. We are the frog in the pot of warm water atop the stove, and in trying to run our day to day lives most do not notice the temperature going up. Without that awareness we will soon be cooked.
How do we find the federal government outlined in the Constitution in today’s circumstance? Our automobile industry is a ward of the state. The mortgage business is a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government. The battle of who decides how best to manage our own bodies continues. Food prices continue to rise because the corn that is the basis of western hemisphere’s food supply is being pumped into our vehicles as subsidized fuel instead. Root causes are ignored while all are equally inconvenienced with cosmetics solutions to malignant problems.
Journeying back to NewYorkLand, our attention is caught by the weekend Time Square bombing attempt. With our lite beer in hand, and with the neighborhood watch peering in the window, we ponder the actions of our federal officials.It has been proposed that the bomber be stripped of his citizenship. Senators Joe Liebermann (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA) this morning introduced legislation declaring anyone committing a terrorist attack against the United States should be granted only the more limited rights accorded to military prisoners caught in acts of sedition (wouldn’t that be an illegal enemy combatant? Didn’t President Bush already do that? Guantanamo anyone?), regardless of citizenship.
This is where the small gnawing away of our liberty becomes deadly serious. Like it or not the Times Square Bumbler is an American citizen. He was granted citizenship so he’s in. The full force of the US Constitution applies to him. He is Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare. Once granted, citizenship cannot be stripped, except by executive order of the President of the United States. It can only be renounced by the individual citizen.
With regard to the Liebermann / Brown proposal, the Constitution is clear. No law may be enacted that abridges any of the rights bestowed to an American citizen. Period. As a citizen the Bumbler is entitled to all of the rights and protections of an American citizen. He will be charged and tried in federal court, and will likely spend the rest of his life fending off the Aryan brotherhood in federal prison. He has already confessed, and the evidence is overwhelming. That does not excuse him from due process or mitigate his Constitutional protections.
The method for dealing with an American citizen who has declared a personal war against the United States is not limiting rights or stripping citizenship. It is the charge of Treason. Treason is the only crime specifically outlined in the Constitution. It is the first and foremost federal crime. All of the hand-wringing is unnecessary. All we need to do is apply the Constitution.
Common Sense Dictates
Our Constitution is being whittled away and being paid lip service. It is no longer our Constitution but a watered-down manual that is not consulted except when convenient - which is now mostly never. The flavor of individual liberty is being homogenized into groupthink. Groupthink is morphing into mob mentality, which may explain why everyone is so angry all the time. Our Constitution is no longer our Constitution. We are being governed by what looks like our Constitution but it really isn’t. It’s Constitution Lite. Welcome to ConstitutionLand. It resembles Disneyland more and more. Soft on facts and more about feeling good than being good. It looks like America but something just isn’t right. It’s missing something. It looks like it could be real, but only the insiders know that it really isn’t. Common Sense requires us to restore the real thing.
RLB
Categories: Rights and Responsibilities, Constitutional Issues, Social Policy, National Sovereignty
Tags: political leadership historical perspective Framers intent civic responsibility
I read about that "law" too. At first I was thinking good - the SOB doesn't deserve rights. But you're point is right. If you have citizenship, all rights apply. Beck was saying the same last week. That's how a lot of totalitarian regimes get started, stripping rights from people everyone hates. Then it's on to who a lot of people hate, then most, and soon there's not a lot of people with any rights left. The guy is a citizen - better to give him his due.
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Well, yeah a citizen should have all of his Constitutional protections. That's a no-brainer. The principles in the Bill of Rights were said to be "inalienable" and given by "God" not men. If that is the case, then they apply not only to coitizens but to all people who appear before any American court. So it's not just Shazad, it's all of those suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay. Consistency, guys...
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I live in Manhattan. Personally I don't care what rights you give any of the terrorists as long as they get fried at the end of the trial. If you have to throw the switch a few times, all the better.
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The Constitution isn't being used? Really?? I don't see people being rounded up as political prisoners. I don't see anyone coming into your home and looking over your shoulder. I'm not seeing anyone looking at Obama as der fuhrer except the tea party people. Looks to me like all of those people wanting to come here don't see it that way either. way off the mark this time.
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I wouln't say that the Constitution isn't being used. We are still functioning as we always have as a representative republic. It's ugly, but it works. That's the point of the legislative gimmicks. It's supposed to be hard to change things.
The balance has always been between individual rights and societal order. Right now the Democrats are in charge, so social order is being stressed more than individual liberty. That is how it's always been. When America tires of it the Republicans will be back in charge.
The proposed law will be instantly struck down by the Supreme Court. It is unconstitutional in the most stark terms. I think it's just an attention grabber. Joe misses being in the headlines. There is no way it passes.
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I agree that the law has no chance of passage and that it would be struck down anyway. I can see some slippage on what parts of the Constitution are applied. The Republicans seem to have a better grasp of the concept of personal liberty and limited government. I think that the Democrats, in their noble desire to make improvements in the country for those that are left behind, see personal liberty as a roadblock in bringing about what they see as positive change. What has held for all of these years is that you can't force someone to do something without proving an overarching need for the country as a whole. Only then are individual rights placed in a secondary mode. Even then, people must be persuaded that that overarching need is legitimate. Without that, the default in this country is for the individual and his rights, not the common good.
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Well, I wasn't paranoid before, but I am now. I never realized that Miller Lite was just a rip-off. Somebody should waterboard the CEO.
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Eisner and Giuliani too. If you want decent theater it's all off-Broadway. The restaurants too. How does a Chili's or Applebee's improve NYC? Maybe that should be their punishment. Dinner at Applebee's and tickets to Lion King every night until they fix what they broke.
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Ok, pretty funny lead in on a pretty serious subject. The tug of war is favoring societal rather than individual issues right now. There have been periods when the country finds itself in turmoil and leans in that direction. Even when the occasional end run is done around the Constitution, it has still held up for nearly 230 years. The system is built to self-correct. My bet is that it will.
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I gotta agree. When the self-correction comes, it's people driven. The tea parties are the start. The Founders really were geniuses. We'll survive the Obamanation.
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See, I find a whole world of truth in this (even the funny parts). Government has a tendency to try to find the path of least resistance into dominating our lives. It offers us some snake oil cure for what ails the country, but all that really results is that we have lost a bit of autonomy in our lives with every new federal program. Unemployment and Social Security made welfare seem like a good idea dooming millions of people to generational poverty. Local school boards have lost control of their education to teach to some standardized test that does not reflect reality. Now the nanny-state wants to take care of our health decisions. It's not the direction we need to be heading. We need to err on the side of liberty.
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Amendment 10 says that the feds are limited to the duties outlined in the Constitution. All other duties are to be assumed at the state level.
i know that's not how it is, but it's what the people who set up this federal system wanted.
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States rights is what most of the dark side of our history hides behind. Slavery, Jim Crow, corruption and smoke-filled rooms. The federal government needs to act to straighten out the messes.
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Intervening in the "dark side" is one thing. Making it the standing policy to override state issues is unconstitutional.
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Are we really going to go around again on Arizona? I'm a little more worried that after spending our grandkids money on the bank bailouts and buying up GM and AIG, and expanding health care into a new entitlement, we've also seen fit to sign onto one TRILLION dollars to bail out Greece. We're in for 17% (which is $170 billion). Now we're giving other countries piles of case to flush down the sewer. WTF?????????
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I cringed at that too. We spent a trillion to bail out our economy here. Greece has lass people in it than Los Angeles, and their GDP is roughly the size of Michigan. That would bbe Michigan today - where they don't manufacture anything except unemployment listings. We gave them a trillion dollars. What do you think Michigan could do with that trillion dollars? How well spent would it be giving a trillion dollars to Los Angeles? Crazy is the new sane.
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Wow, that does seem like a lot of overkill in fixing the problem.
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Welcome to our world. We'll send someone over to administer the conservative oath.
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The Constitution is still there - you can see it in person at the archives in Washington. We can't go by 1787 rules though. It's a different world and we have evolved as a society. How does a 230 year old piece of paper deal with the many complex issues that we are faced with today? The history of America is filled with an evolution of our people and our constitution. It has been continuously reinterpreted as time passed. It allowed slavery - Lincoln reinterpreted it. It didn't deal with equal protection under the law, an amendment was added. Even the founding fathers didn't agree on what the scope of the constitution would be which is why the bill of rights was added on as amendments. The constitution has been amended and has grown in scope. We live in 2010, not 1810. The constitution needs to reflect that.
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No one is saying that society doesn't evolve, of course it does. The Founders did agree on the powers of the government and it's structure. The Constitution was approved unanimously. The articles are what everyone agreed to. Limited government as outlined. The Bill of rights were the bones of contention, and had to be sent back to the states for ratification, as the Constitution prescribes. They were ratified by each of the states and the Constitution was so amended. It did take awhile to fully implement them. Some could say we are still working on it. But the structure of the government and it's powers are laid out in specific detail. Amendment 10 says that if a power is not spelled out in the Constitution, it is reserved to the states. All you have to do is read it.
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All of this came out of the progressive movement of the late 1800's when science replaced religion as our source for answers. This wasn't a horrible thing except science has it's limits too, and those limits are reached when trying to modify human behavior. Science is a great tool to measure things. It can explain "how", it can't explain "why". Why is part of our spiritual nature, or our humanity if you will. Just because something fits a scientific formula does not make it useful in structuring a society. There has been good to come out of social science, but it will never replace conscience or morality as forces for doing good. You really can't legislate behavior. Free will trumps all.
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I'm not going to touch science replacing religion. I think there are principles that this country was founded on that are important to keep alive. Opportunity if you work at it, the freedom to be left alone to live your life, all people having rights that are not something the government can take away. Sometimes I worry when I read the news. I'm not sure I like the idea of the government monitoring my emails or cell phone calls. I definitely don't want them making medical decisions for me. I think that we fix the going too far at election time. We've been at this a long time, and we're not at civil war. I don't think it will go that far. We'll just toss the bums out in November. It's what we do.
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