The Briar Philosopher - Of the People, By the People, For the People (FREE ACCESS)

We are less than a month away from celebrating another birthday for the United States of America. I know the 4th of July usually comes and goes without too many people giving more than a passing thought to the power of that date. We wave flags and blow things up and put on our best patriotic show of support for the nation but there often isn’t much understanding of what or why we celebrate.  The signing of the Declaration of Independence set into motion the Great American Experiment which was and is an attempt to create a true democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. All of the people. Every single one. 

While it is true that in the very beginning those who could vote and participate in the government were limited to white, male property owners over the age of 21, it was not the intent of the Founding Fathers for that to remain the case. What they created in the United States Constitution was a living breathing document that could be amended to expand the blessings of liberty to all.  Now there are those who consider themselves “originalists.” These people really seem to want to take everything back to before the Bill of Rights when only white, male property owners could participate in their own governance. They claim to have a handle on what the Founding Fathers intended and claim that it was not a multicultural society with rights being recognized for women and minorities. They are wrong.  How do I know they are wrong? I know they are wrong because the founding fathers wrote in many tomes and letters what their original intent was and they wrote it in language that cannot be misinterpreted. It was obvious from the beginning that they intended with this great experiment to eventually expand participation and protection to every citizen, without regard to race, creed, color or even sex. That was the idea. That was the experiment. To see if it was possible to create a union that empowered all of its citizens equally.  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were always intended to be expanded to cover the change they knew would take place in the coming years. We’ve been working toward that ever since and we continue to wobble toward a perfection of those ideals. 

There has always been a contingent in this nation that has stood against the expansion of those basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Following the Civil War this contingent, also calling themselves “originalists” fought to reinstate the institution of slavery by claiming the Federal Government did not have the right to protect black citizens within the states. They had every intention of returning African Americans to a state of involuntary servitude within their state boundaries and they might have succeeded if not for the living breathing nature of the Constitution. What came from this was the creation and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1866 which guaranteed that the Constitution would protect all citizens of the US, regardless of what state they made their home and regardless of what color they might be.  That was the power of the Great Experiment. That was and is the power of the Constitution as a living, breathing document, a living breathing idea. 

At present there are those who still seek to return this nation to a previous era but that’s not the idea behind this nation and it never was. This isn’t my opinion. It’s a fact. One need only read the writings of those who proposed the idea in the first place to understand the truth of it. 

It is impossible to overstate the importance of maintaining the Constitution of the United States as a living document capable of growth and change. I wrote a post to that effect on Facebook not too long ago, stating my opinion that failing to do so would lead this country to chaos.  A dear friend of ours from Vietnam gave me the perspective I was looking for to make it clear. I spoke of the possibility of an endless cycle of bloody coups and power grabs. He wanted to make it clear to me that my thoughts were not mere conjecture. In many places on the planet, including where he is from in Bangladesh, bloody coups and power grabs are the rule, not the exception. People live in fear and with a sense of instability. Their liberties are not guaranteed and can be granted or revoked at the whim of whoever happens to be in power at any given time. There is no stability. There is no security. There is no true freedom. 

We have lived in this nation for so long that we take for granted the power of the experiment we are enacting. We cannot imagine living in a country without the freedom of speech, religion, redress of grievances or the right to peaceably assemble in protest. We can’t imagine living in a place where the right to make our own choices can be stripped from us so we allow that to happen a little at a time. We allow certain segments of the population to be treated as though those guarantees don’t apply to them. We allow the slow chipping away, the slow crippling to human rights, especially if that chipping doesn’t affect us personally.  That road leads to the slow degradation of our democracy to the point that it will no longer be recognizable as such. Power will be reconsolidated into the hands of a few men at the top and government by the people, of the people and for the people will perish from the earth. 

A cycle of bloody coups and power grabs is not some far-fetched conspiracy theory. It is all around us, all over the globe and the thing that stands between the citizens of this country and that future is the power of the living Constitution of the United States of America and the ideals it embodies. We have yet to perfect those ideals but we must do our very best to pass them on to our children so they know the power of that which they celebrate.