It’s an old story—perhaps even an urban legend—that a frog in a pan of gradually heated water will not perceive its peril and will fail to leap from the pan until it’s too late and it is effectively cooked.
Or there's the tale of the death of a thousand cuts. One cut, or two, or three--or eight--and you might not even take notice. But in a few more cuts, or a hundred, suddenly a threshold is passed, and in surprise, you find your very survival at risk.
More and more, the feeling has grown in me that our country is this frog, and we are cooked. We’re done, but we don’t yet know it.
Look at the cuts we have suffered:
*Our nation has condoned, approved, authorized, and excused torture.
*It has allowed the indefinite suspension of habeas corpus.
*It has asserted that when following its own laws becomes inconvenient, they are not laws, really.
*It has forbidden judicial review of allegations of wrongdoing.
*It has promoted expediency as a welcome relief from the demands of principle.
*It has befriended and aided convenient tyrants, yet boasted it despises tyranny.
*It has rendered the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to its Constitution functionally meaningless. It has argued that the ideals embodied in these amendments are fine but impractical, and that they cannot possibly apply to every citizen, or at all times, or under all circumstances. To insist that they do could cause annoyance, loss of profit, or a danger to livelihood or life or limb.
*And it has asked its young people to raise their right hands and solemnly pledge to defend with their lives the principle that constitutional ideals matter more than threats to their lives or their livelihoods.
There is no more United States of America. It perished some time ago, the victim of a thousand cuts.
Our Great Democracy became a commodity we possessed, rather than the way in which we related to one another and to the world. We showed up for the pageants and the holiday celebrations, and repeated its catechisms, but we were not allowed to sully the pure artifice of democracy by the actual grubby practice of it.
And now we do not know where to find a common answer to the question of How shall this people be governed—by what principles, through what means?
It is time to start over.
We can come up with our own answers, without preconception.
We can start by answering this question. Which principles shall we agree always apply, under all circumstances, for all our people?
Let’s get started. We can come up with a new Constitution, that with luck, will last another 200 years.