What's Afoot?

In November of this year, we will select a President/Vice President, every House Member and 1/3 of the Senate.  That kind of turnover among elected representatives is possible every 4 years, but this year, the outcome will be profound, earth-shaking, and possibly unimaginable.  Seems like I should arise from my silent stupor and address the concerns I have going into this election.  I am not concerned about the age of Trump or Biden.  I am not losing sleep regarding any one specific policy proposal promoted by either man or either party.  I am, however, deeply concerned that voters in our country will make their election decision in ignorance of the issues, and thereby run the risk of repeating a human history we must avoid.  It appears to me that we may have metaphorically cured polio only to learn there are those who want to bring it back to cull the herd, and I am horrified. 

Before our war for independence commencing in 1776, there were only two kinds of governments on this planet.  Dictators by birthright and dictators by military might.  Want to be a ruler?  Great.  Raise an army and attack the sitting government, which is also a dictatorship, or find a way to marry into a royal family and inherit the leadership gene.  Play polo or study war, enjoy pomp and circumstance or raise an army, either way could get you to the throne of leadership in almost any nation on our planet. 

But standing on the shoulders of great thinkers throughout human history a particular thinker in 1690 published a book entitled the “Second Treatise of Government”.  John Locke (1832-1704) was wonderful, and chances are you may never have heard of him, but if you have read our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution you will know his words.  He was a tremendous influence on the great thinkers who not only founded this nation but who were able to articulate what we stood for, and what democracy was really all about.

Imagine a nation where the path to the throne did not go through a military general or a royal family.  There was no such government on the planet in 1776.  We were it.  We became this great, noble, wonderful experiment wherein everything seemed possible, everyone had a chance, everyone was treated equally, and everyone got to help make the decisions via the ballot.  Wow.  We were laughed at by kings and generals around the world.  They are not laughing now.  They are worried.  Or at least those in the world who have come down the same path we cleared to enact a democracy.  We are and have been their guiding light.  Those leaders who absolutely oppose allowing the “people” to choose are prepared to leap for joy should we decide to abandon democracy.  You know who they are:  Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and this week a scattering of African, Central and South American countries. 

With so much at stake, I encourage everyone to read Locke and Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and Adams to get a gut-level understanding of the foundation of the United States.  There are deep footings that support our foundation and on which we have built this democracy.  We should know those footings as they keep our democratic foundation afloat.  As a high school government teacher, I taught hundreds of students about this great and noble experiment.  But it appears to me now we have people in leadership roles who could not pass my high school government final exam.  Some appear not to be aware of the three branches of government which is a mere drop in the democracy conceptual bucket.  That scares me.

So how in the world were these early thinkers able to wrest the organization of government away from bloodlines and battle lines?  Logic.  Footing number 1.  They began with one simple tenet:  All humans are created equal.  Not in terms of height and weight and aptitude or talent but in terms of human rights.  If we fail to give one person their inherent rights we have infringed on all humans.  Every human has certain rights.  Every person.  From there it was easy to argue that these equal people should be able to cast equal votes when it came time to select leaders.  If we are to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people then we must admit right up front that all people are equal to all other people.  There cannot be a group that gets special treatment based on the amount of pigment in their skin, or the amount of dollars in their checking accounts, or the language they speak, or the gender they claim.  All men (sic) are created equal. 

If you do not buy that notion, do not accept that notion, and are not willing to act in ways that demonstrate your belief in that notion then America is never going to make any sense to you at all.  We keep doing things like monitoring the wealthy to be sure they aren’t cheating and monitoring the military to be sure they are in line with civilian authority or monitoring each manufacturer to be sure no one company gets a competitive advantage in such a way that they can set price as though they were a monopoly or produce a harmful product.  All of that is because we believe all humans are equal and the rich and powerful should not be more equal. When Elon Musk votes it cannot mean more than when my first-generation American family next door votes.  He and other wealthy folks may wish they could override the votes of “peasants”, but not in this country they cannot.  And I assure you they want to.  They yearn for the royalty of old into which they could buy their way. 

The second footing is: no human is above the law.  When we elect these reps and senators and they draft legislation that the president signs it becomes the law.  No one is exempt from those laws.  They are to be applied equally to all. Anyone who argues there are some people we should legally punish and some people to whom we should offer exemptions does not get America.

Other footings include the separation of church and state.  Why?  Because our founding fathers arrived here from nations where the church and state were the same and people were punished or rewarded if they believed the right things and worshipped the right way.  The state, the government, is prohibited from recognizing religion because religion is such a precious belief for all who hold religious beliefs.  About 1,000 religions are being practiced today on our planet.   Each of those congregations believes they are worshipping the one true deity and that their deity stands behind them.  The state cannot say Muslims are right and Christians are wrong and atheists are really wrong.  The government must not say anything at all.  We keep fudging on this footing.  Some people want their deity recognized by the state not knowing how awful a circumstance that is for the human condition.  Like candidates for office, we each get to choose our own religion or our own lack thereof.

Another big footing is freedom of the press.  If our news source promotes lies rather than truth, we are in trouble.  You may have received your view of the world from a small portion of news media.  If so, your view is likely wrong.  We have witnessed news sources going before the audience and announcing they lied.  Why?  Because those journalists and printed news and broadcast news have the right to get at the truth and share the truth and liars were revealed.  Few things are more important in a democracy than knowing the truth, and then deciding. 

The people shall have freedom of speech, freedom from self-incrimination, freedom to peacefully assemble, freedom to petition the government to redress their grievances, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, right to a fair, speedy, and public trial with a jury of your peers.  As the government had a very small standing army, we were dependent on members of the militia to protect us.  Therefore, those in the militia shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and no soldier shall be boarded in a private house during peacetime. 

Reading these amendments implies the trials and tribulations the new citizens of America had experienced. The “Crown” and the “Church” were interwoven giving a belief system the power of enforcement of one religion over another.  The press was unreliable.  People were tortured to confess.  People were thrown in jail and never brought to trial.  When public speech conflicted with a general consensus then the speaker was often punished.  On and on and on.  None of the above was reflective of freedom or of a government of, by and for the people. It was a government solely for the powerful or the majority.  Jefferson warned us about what he called “the tyranny of the majority.”  No, we cannot vote to enshrine evangelistic beliefs as American beliefs.  That very sentence is treasonous.

We said we believed no man was above the law.  No man, woman, child, etc.  We said all humans should have equal treatment in the eyes of the law.  We said procedures ranging from investigations and indictments and trials and convictions must flow the same for the wealthy and the poor, the White and the Black, the hetero and homosexual, the Christian and atheist, and all men and all women.  No exceptions.

And hence my fear.  There are proselytizers afoot preaching that the law for the rich should be different, and the treatment should be different.  If a rich person does not want a speedy trial for political reasons that trial should postponed.  We have a candidate for office who clearly does not believe all humans are created equal as he has promised to use the military to secure his view, not the Constitutional view, promised to punish those who disagree with him, implying that some identifiable groups of humans should not have the same rights as others.  Nothing could be more un-American, more treasonous, than those beliefs.  Those positions are not held by folks who swear to protect and defend the Constitution.  Those positions are not held by those who value our freedom and our liberty.  Those anti-American positions are the footings of right think, 1984, Nazism, and any other dictatorial government with the audacity to announce what all in the land should believe and follow without due process of law.

If we excavate the footings our foundation then the US of A will be gone, and this great and noble experiment will end.  The only recourse is to vote if we are to remain a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  “The people” is everyone.  On the side of police cars it says their mission is “To protect and to serve.”  What must be made clear is that this mission applies to everyone, even the person locked in the back seat of the car. 

Please vote.  Please think.  Please choose wisely even if you agree somewhat with the extremists who would undo America.  They have the right to their opinion.  They do not have the right to attack the Constitution and dismantle the foundation of our nation, nor do they have the right to physically attack those who think otherwise and the institutions that represent our footings.  Those who propose to undo our democracy follow one man who does not understand America.  We must defeat him, then teach him.  What’s afoot?  The future of democracy in the USA.