WORDISM CANNOT BE FREEDOM | 2009-11-04
A society which is based on a particular set of beliefs, no matter how much it cries "Freedom!" cannot in the long run be free. This is such a simple truth it is hard to state and even harder to deny.
Freedom is the right to believe what you will. A society which is based on a belief, no matter what that belief may be, cannot allow it to be doubted. Anyone who says "That is what America is a all ABOUT!" is an enemy of freedom, even if, in fact especially if, he declares America is all about Freedom.
That is why the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are such perfectly opposite documents. The Declaration was a propaganda document written in wartime. Those who confuse the two documents or find any continuity between them has no historical perspective at all.
That is why the Declaration was a unanimous declaration. The Constitution went into effect with two states still out. In the Declaration, slave states, which included most of them, cheerfully declared that all men were created equal and experts in British Law cheerfully declared that the King alone was responsible for almost everything Britain did.
No literate adult in 1776 would have believed either statement. But there was a WAR on.
There is not a single principle declared in the entire United States Constitution. "The people" were writing a CONTRACT. The President swore to uphold the Constitution. Today we are told this means Constitution "as interpreted by the Supreme Court." That is an oath no on who wrote or adopted the Constitution would have accepted:
"I swear to uphold and defend the latest opinion of the United States Supreme Court."
We al know that, if we give it the slightest thought.
But we do not give it the slightest thought.
We BELIEVE.
We believe in something that "America is all about," multiracialism, multiculturalism, Religious Truth, Freedom. And on each of these subject we read tomes which explain how only the set of beliefs set forward in the tome represent goodness and truth, the ONLY goodness and truth.
Documents like the Declaration are a dime a dozen. The Declaration of Rights in France a few years later led to a terror and tyranny worst than the Bourbon one, which was really awful. The Soviet Declarations led to a uniquely awful tyranny.
In fact, the Soviets not only had their Liberation Declaration, they adopted a Constitution in 1936 which announced FAR more freedom than the American one did. It even allowed secession.
But, just as our Constitution now has that little rider, "as interpreted by the Supreme Court," the 1936 Soviet Constitution took on a little rider which was not included in its words: "as interpreted by Comrade Stalin."
And, of course, the Soviet was "all about" Communism."
In fact, the National Socialists acted under the Weimar Constitution, which officially ruled Germany until May 8, 1945. It contained an Emergency Provision which gave the government the right to take ANY emergency measure, ACCORDING TO ITS OWN INTERPRETATION.
So both Hitler and Stalin demanded loyalty to the Constitution, subject to interpretation. Both Hitler and Stalin just said what Germany or the USSR was All About.
No one at the US Constitutional Convention would have allowed any one branch of level of government to say what America was all about. If you look at the Federalist Papers, the idea that any one branch, least of all the "least powerful of them," the Judiciary, would INTERPRET it.
What America was about from the get-go is not allowing anyone to say what America is all about. They had Stalin and Hitler figured out a century before they were born.