This was originally posted July 4, 2018. I repost it because I find it still very relevant.
On this, our nation’s birthday, I have had numerous thoughts running through my mind as I compare the idea of America, as flawed as it may have historically been in its implementation, and what we currently confront with the administration currently in office.
In the process several key themes assert themselves again and again in my thoughts.
I do not contend that together they represent a coherent world view, although I think that combined they begin to approximate that.
As we approach evening — and the darkness necessary for fireworks displays — on the East Coast, I choose to take the time to share them, as incomplete and fragmentary as they may be.
That is what I offer below the break, if you have any interest.
I am the proud descendant of immigrants. Two of my four grandparents were born in Europe, in what is now Poland and Lithuania. No one from whom I am descended was on this continent before 1862. That gives me a greater connection to this nation than many, including the current occupant of the Oval Office, but also connects me with many whose own lineage is replete with immigrants of all sorts within the two generations prior to their own.
That aside, I respect those whose lineage here goes back far longer than my own. That includes my spouse, who is a direct descendant of a passenger on the Mayflower. It also includes my two great-nieces and so many of my students who as descendants of enslaved Black Americans have a lineage that precedes mine my at least 40+ years and in some cases far more.
That also includes a niece whose father is from a Pueblo in New Mexico where his family has been since well before there was a United States. It includes the sons of my wife’s sister, whose father grew up speaking Spanish in what is now Northern New Mexico, being able to trace his family back on this continent and what is now the US far longer than the vast majority of those who now seem to advocate a White (usually Male) non-Hispanic domination of this nation that represents in population a decreasing percentage. But then, we need to remember that when Roanoke Colony, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay were settled, such people were a distinct minority, being heavily outnumbered in what is now the US by both the Native Americans and those who were Spanish speaking.
I might note in passing that on this day when we remember the Declaration of Independence we should also remember these words from that document, among the grievances against King George III:
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
I have personally wandered through a variety of religions during my 7+ decades on this planet. I have that freedom because of the religious liberty afforded all here. It has not always been perfect: before we were a nation we had colonies that discriminated, and as one who will be teaching the first half of American History to 8th graders this year I will be sure they both understand the imperfections of our foundings and how far we have come. As one of Jewish background, I think I understand something of the impact of religious discrimination or imposition of any kind, whether it be to exclude entry because of religion or to discriminate against those here, whether it is to try to prevent religious practice or to impose religious tests. Our Constitution prohibited the latter federally even before passage of the First Amendment with its no establishment and free exercise clauses. I also note that as a student of history that we have had Muslims here since well before there was a United States — remember that at least some of those slaves brought here were from areas where people were Muslim.
When I was born in 1946, the US Military was segregated, as were professional sports. Women were readily discriminated against in law, professions, and business. To be gay was to risk being prosecuted for criminal behavior.
In my lifetime we have seen a huge increase in liberty and equality — on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation.
In general, the tradition in this country has been that once rights have been granted, they are not taken away. And to restrict rights that current people have to those in the future seems a clear violation of the 14th Amendment notion of Equal Protection of the Law, which clause may have originally been written to apply to the states but in Bolling v Sharp (the DC case that accompanied the 4 state cases in KS, DE, VA, and SC that made up Brown v Board) a unanimous Supreme Court applied the notion of Equal Protection against Federal government action. I would hope that even Supreme Court Justices who disagreed with some previous decisions would at least abide by that principle. Otherwise the notion of liberty and equality becomes nonsense, and the Constitution and its Amendments an empty vessel into which whatever political and theological argument one wishes to impose can be shoehorned.
It is not that I do not believe in reversing precedents. In 1943 in W Virginia Board of Education v Barnette a 6-3 Court reversed a decision from 1940, Minersville v Gobitis, as having been wrongly decided. But the latter decision did NOT thereby limit the liberty or equality of anyone, unlike what would happen were Griswold, Roe, or any of Kennedy’s gay rights decisions reversed.
I have traveled some to other nations, with cultures and traditions different than ours. As a student of history, government, politics, and religion, I am well aware of many others. But as that kind of student I also know how each of those can be used as an instrument of repression, as a justification for imperialism and conquest.
In general, I tend to try to start with things that transcend each of these. Because I believe in freedom of conscience, I neither want to impose those beliefs/attitudes that come from my current religious orientation as a Quaker nor do I wish to be subject to others imposing theirs on me. That is why I read our constitutional documents independent of any religion, and why I am a firm supporter of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Rights, to which in theory almost all nations have subscribed.
It is also why I cannot accept leadership in my country refusing to abide by agreed to international documents on refugees, asylum, torture and genocide. I refuse to accept the notion that America cannot both in its internal and external activities abide by the highest principles. We executed a Japanese General because of atrocities committed by troops under his command, even though the actions in question were neither ordered nor approved by him. We established the Nuremberg principle that following orders was not a sufficient justification for what were clearly crimes against humanity.
As I read our founding documents, as I teach them, I have never found justification for treating corporations as equivalent of human persons. Yes, as artificial persons they have SOME rights, many of which could more properly be traced to contract law going back to the Dartmouth College case, but unless a corporation can be jailed or executed — subject to the same penalties as a human being — it should not have the same protections.
While our 5th and 14th Amendments say that we should not be denied life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and while Article I Section 8 allows Congress to protect intellectual property through copyright and patent law, it also allows Congress to tax, and to regulate Commerce. Our Founders never intended commercial activity to be of greater importance than the rights of individual persons. That for too long and far too often we have had Justices whose interpretation of the Constitution allowed them to reach such judgments has always been to my mind an indication that we had not yet fully grown into the idea of America.
Who is an American? Here I turn to Article VI of the Constitution, where just before it states that there should be no religious test for any office or public trust under the Constitution, it states
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution
Anyone who supports the Constitution and is willing to be bound by it ascribes to the notion of what it means to be an American.
We may choose to require someone to wait before they can exercise all the privileges of American citizenship — to vote, to hold public office, to travel on an American passport. We may require them to demonstrate English competency (although that is NOT required for one born a citizen, whether in Puerto Rico or in one of the states, and we waive it for the elderly) and to demonstrate some knowledge of our history and government (a test that unfortunately far too many holding public office, including our national Chief Executive, probably could not pass).
But the protections of the Constitution are not limited to those who are citizens. Read the first words of Amendment V: No person
Amendment VI gives rights to all accused, citizens or not
The restrictions on bail, fines, and cruel and unusual punishment are not reserved only to citizens.
We are supposed to be a nation of laws, not of men, with Lady Justice blindfold so as not to see the persons before her, be they prominent and wealthy, or undocumented aliens.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I at this late stage of life wish to become one. But if the founding texts of this nation cannot be read plainly by all, if instead they are subject to tortured interpretations to reach predetermined ends, then how meaningful are they in guiding how our nation function?
As an American, I can acknowledge that my country has at times been wrong. It has been the greatness of this country that we have moved to rectify many of those wrongs over time. Sometimes it required constitutional amendments. Other times it required statutory action. At times Courts and Presidents have come to understand that fidelity to constitutional principles required reinterpretation, but almost always in the direction of greater liberty and equality.
It is that tradition, history, of attempting to increase liberty and equality that makes me proud to be an American.
It is the desire to see as much of that as possible around the world that makes me want to see our country stay involved internationally, and not always measuring things at home or abroad strictly by economic metrics: there are things more important.
At the beginning of this post I warned that I could not assert that what I was going to offer was going to be a complete or fully coherent vision. It is not.
It is for me sufficient to be able to state this:
these are principles upon which I am not only comfortable standing, but in whose defense I am more than willing to affiliate myself with words offered at the end of the document whose publication 242 years ago we celebrate today. Those words end that document, were agreed to by all the men who signed it, and read like this:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Peace.