These are not the best of times.
In fact, they often seem pretty close to the worst of times. Now it’s quite possible that I am seeing things through the filter of old-manness, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I would be perfectly fine with turning the world over to people under 50, as long as none of them had the name Trump.
As for this country, we find ourselves in an amost inescapable trap called original intent.
The fact is, unless we can find a way to get past original intent, America is pretty much over. We have people — so-called conservatives — who believe that in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, nothing matters as much as the original intent of the white men who wrote it 286 years ago.
Were they good men?
Most certainly were.
Were they great men?
Some certainly were.
Were they geniuses?
One or two — Tom Jefferson and Ben Franklin –quite probably were.
Were they human beings with the weaknesses and flaws all humanshare?
All of them were, and there lies the problem with original intent.
They were without exception men who came of age in the second haf of the 18th century, and almost without exception they were Englishmen, not Americans.
People living in Massachusetts and people living in South Carolina in not consider themselves part of the same country. People may have forgotten it now, but until 1865, the verb used after the noun United States of America was “are,” not “is.”
To be fair, I can think of three things they had in common, but they aren’t good things.
First, none of them believed women should have a coequal status with men. They couldn’t own property or vote, among other things. It would be more than 130 years before women would have right to vote and longer than that until they would have the same financial rights as men.
Second, no states believed that the people we now call African-Americans should have the same rights as white people. Not all states believe in chattel slavery, but many who opposed slavery thought the races should be segregated. Quite a few believed the answer to the problem was sending them back to Africa.
Third, most of the original founders believed that men who owned property should have more of a say in running the country than people who didn’t.
So there’s your original intent. Even the founders themselves didn’t believe the Constitution was handed down on tablets from Mount Washington. Jefferson once said he thought it ought to be good for a generation or two before it needed to be changed.
Actually, things changed even sooner than that. In 1803, Jefferson himself bought the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million dollars, an incredible bargain of about $18 a square mile. All of a sudden, the Constitution was majorly flawed.
The Civil War enable the U.S. to eliminate slavery, but it was nearly a hundred years later before African-Americans really had equal rights. Gon ownership wasn’t really a problem because few people saw it as an absolute right to own anything from popguns to suitcase nukes.
Original intent literally makes no sense at all. Four members of the Supreme Court, including two who believe in original intent, wouldn’t be eligible.
There are problems with our system that cannot be changed without amending or changing the Constitution. First and foremost is the electoral college.
Donald Trump didn’t come close to winning the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020, losing to Hillary Clinton by three million voters and to Joe Biden by seven million. It’s one thing to say the majority shouldn’t be able to impose its will on the minority on issues like gun control or abortion, but this is different.
Since George H.W. Bush got more votes than his opponent in 1988, Republicans have won the popular vote in only one of the seven presidential elections (2004). But they won the electoral vote in three.
The 2020 vote would have been obscene. If 44,000 votes in three states had switched from Biden to Trump, Trump would have won under the current system despite losing by seven million votes.
The only way to change that is to amend the Constitution, and an amendment has to be ratified by 38 states. That means 13 states can block any amendment, the 13 smallest states, some of which have more farm animals than people.
We have a situation where fewer than 6-7 percent of the people can block any meaningful change.
And if you think that has anything to do with the original intent of any foundersd who didn’t own slaves, you’re dead wrong.