I admire the myth of America, and have taken many of the ideals it embodies to heart. However, I am painfully conscious that it is a myth, and deeply irked by people who argue as though it were fact. The idea that the country is founded on liberty and justice for all sounds awfully nice, but it’s a lie. Slavery was explicitly embedded in the constitution. Women were excluded from voting for a long time. Our ‘founding fathers’ or at least the ‘bold pioneers’ used biological warfare on the native population.
Whenever I see someone argue based on nation’s foundation in fairness and freedom, I wince. It’s about like arguing “Because Santa Claus said so.” Even when I agree with their point. Maybe even especially then.
I think other countries have national myths also. That’s part of how nationalism works its magic on the species.
Actually, you’re taking the advantage of time and centuries of what we believe to be positive social change out of the equation when weighing whether or not the ideas of liberty and justice for all were embedded in the constitution. I shouldn’t have to point this out to you. Let’s say we crafted a document that you decided was really all about your ideas of liberty and justice for all, then took it forward a few hundred years.
I’m sure someone would be writing about how archaic‘s ideas of liberty and justice were and how inappropriate for then-current sociopolitical norms it was.
I don’t think he’s saying that society couldn’t have been allowed to change, but rather has a problem with people idolizing the founding fathers or other people in US history who didn’t share the ideas that most people think they did. For their time, and in the document they wrote, there were a lot of reasonably suited concepts for liberty and justice, but it’s still true that blacks weren’t considered people by many of them at the time of the writing, among other things/people, and weren’t included in the “freedoms” that were given. Regardless of the advantage that time has provided us to enact societal change, the founding fathers probably *didn’t* have many of those changes in mind, despite the fact that they would obviously not have liked to be slaves themselves, and therefore wasn’t as full of liberty as many suggest.
I agree with here in that it’s irritating when people argue about the origins of US and place it on a pedestal, using it as an example of how great “America’s” foundation is, because it shows that they clearly misunderstand the origins of the country, and selectively apply positives from history without understanding the negatives. (As an aside, I feel the same irritation when people express that Adolf Hitler was the most evil man in history, and blame the Holocaust entirely on him.)
To be fair, however, it’s still worthy of note that the constitution was a very progressive document and should not to disregarded as important in history. However, I don’t think it or the founding fathers need to be defended in this case.
(sorry about the double post… messed up on the LJ tag.)
I tend to be more irritated when people try to argue that their ideas match those of the founding fathers, and, because of that, think their side of a debate should have more weight. As far as liberty and justice for all goes, the writers were pretty specific as to who they thought should have particular rights and freedoms, and social norms dicated who got them (which was planned by the founders as much as anything), so I agree that such an argument is bunk as well, and that makes me somewhat sad.
Liberty and justice for more is closer to the truth.
In many ways, American citizens are less free now than they were during the 1920s. The amount of interference in personal and economic choices is orders of magnitude higher now than it was before the rise of the regulatory welfare state.
What are some of the interferences you’re thinking of?
I refer you to the Federal Register, from 1936 to the present. And if that isn’t enough, to the United States Code. Just the tax stuff you and I specialize in is so much more complicated than it was back in the 1920s. And the number of controlled substances, with the extreme penalties for using them! Securities laws are far more complex. Many more professions require licensing. The Patriot Act and related anti-terror provisions!
There’s this loud trumpeting of a few discrete new freedoms, covering for the advance of an avalanche of new laws and regulations. I don’t think any one human can grok the full extent of the federal statutes and regulations, there are just too many now.
I wasn’t disputing this; I was just curious what figured prominently in your thoughts.
That’s why I don’t look at the letters, but moreso the spirit of the American Ideal… not the political landscape. Here are some thoughts from one of my favorite philosophers.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?[…]We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” (‘Atlas Shrugged’ 1957)
“The Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals … it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government … it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.” (Ayn Rand)
“The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve ‘the common good.’ It is true that capitalism does – if that catch-phrase has any meaning – but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.” (Ayn Rand)
When you look at the context the FF were working in, the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution were staggeringly radical documents. Hell, they are now, in a lot of places.
No, the FF weren’t perfect, by any measure. The hypocrisy of racism & sexism & a lot of other -isms needed years to be cut out of the body politic, & the surgery goes on. However, if I was to be given a choice between the US of the 1790’s & almost any European nation of the time, I’d go with the US, with the *possible* exception of Holland.
THAT’S PINKO COMMIE TALK!