I'm telling you, I've just been really busy and burned out these past few days, and haven't had time to write the post that I've had kicking around in my mind. But I've got time to put up little snippets, like this one:
It occured to me recently that I've never read the U.S. Constitution. Nor, for that matter, as far as I can remember, even "The Declaration of Independence" (though I think it's safe to say that at some point in my early school years, it was probably read to me).
So yesterday and today, on lunch break and while waiting for a coworker to carpool to Albany, I read the Constitution and "The Declaration of Independence."
Hmmm.
Good stuff, that. And it's left me feeling so... so very patriotic.
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It's been a long time since I read the Declaration. I don't think I ever read the Constitution straight through. Bits and pieces of parts that applicable to a situation at a given time.
Fresh off reading them do you feel that the country is living as the founders would have envisioned?
I don't think we're living as the founders would have envisioned, but I think that that's perfectly okay. Our world is so entirely different, our basic realities, our knowledge, our lifestyles, are so completely out of whack with what the founders knew that I think it would be a mistake to try too diligently to live as they envisioned. You know, they had some great ideas, but then they had some very bad ones (not role models when it comes to race, or gender issues, or a few others). And then we've just moved on in ways that aren't good or bad, just "on." Did the founders mean for the first amendment to apply to porn and slasher films? How could they have possibly meant that? Does it mean that it shouldn't? Not necessarily.
I guess I think that overall we are living within the parameters set up in the constitution or captured in the amendments. I think we're living within the basic ideals of the founders, within the very broad strokes. I think that the liberals in this country and the conservatives in this country all, for the most part, have agendas that would still fall well within those broad strokes, because they're very, very broad. We accuse each other otherwise, of course.
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