U.S. Constitution Protects Us From Public Opinion
Frequent commenter Larry Lemmert remarks on my post in which I wrote to a reader:
Do you find the notion that we can have a robust economy without destroying our planet to be absurd? Why? Personally, I believe that true prosperity will come from evolving a new economy that takes care of people, rather than killing them. Why is that so hard to accept?…..What if we change the focus of our efforts and investments from fossil fuels and war, and directed them to education and cleantech? Is there some reason that this simply won’t work? I sure don’t see it……It’s not a sin to try to make good things happen in the world, and the concept is perfectly compatible with a healthy economy.
Larry comments:
All your goals are noble but demanding that the government be the enforcer of nobility is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Only when you can convince a majority that the problems are beyond the scope of local control can you ever hope to usher in the faux utopia of which you speak.
I hear you, Larry, but let me ask you to look at this differently for a moment; I feel especially compelled to comment because of today’s historic U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage at the federal level, which will overturn the laws in 13 states that currently prohibit the practice.
The Court said that this is an issue of human rights that are explicit in the Constitution, and thus public opinion is irrelevant. (Let me quickly add that public opinion at a national level overwhelmingly favors gay marriage, though this varies from state to state.)
Public opinion irrelevant? That’s a radical notion, isn’t it? No it isn’t.
The beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that it puts limits on what people can do to one another, simply because of certain belief systems. For example, the people of Alabama (to pick a state) might favor various forms of racial discrimination: segregated schools, whites-only public bathrooms, poll taxes, racial bias in the workplace, perhaps even slavery…who knows? Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, as, at its core, our country is built around the principles that say in essence: There are no laws demanding intelligence, enlightenment, and decency, but there most certainly are laws protecting everyone from stupidity, hate, and barbarism. If that doesn’t work for you, move to a place where these protections don’t apply; it won’t be that hard to find one.
We live in a world in which our sensibilities are (generally) evolving for the better, and it’s very important that we have a government built on a document that protects us all against people who simply didn’t get the memo.
The problem isn’t government. The problem is who our government has been working for.
Abraham Lincoln pointed out that what we should has is a government of, for, and by the people (and by that he didn’t mean a tyranny of the majority).
How shall we then best define “national security” for ourselves…?
First Century Greek historian and essayist, Plutarch, is said to have warned us, “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
Similarly, Abraham Lincoln reminded us of the counsel in the Gospel of Matthew 12:25 in the New Testament, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
Between the rich and the rest of us, the cavernous divide and imbalance in the US today is wider and deeper than at any time since the raging inequity that pushed our nation into the depths of the Great Depression. The Gilded Age of the Robber Barons holds little against our present state.
James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks and Edward N. Wolff at the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University completed a study called “The World Distribution of Household Wealth” and it provides a window into part of the chasm across the global human society:
· The richest 5% of Earth’s people own 71% of all assets; the richest 10% own 85% of all assets.
· Compare this with the poorest 50% of Earth’s people, who, altogether, own barely 1% of global wealth.
· 80% of Earth’s people live on under $10 USD/day; 50% of Earth’s people obtain under $2 USD/day.
Here’s a related fact that grandly and simply illustrates the imbalance…
Just eighty people in the world possess more wealth than 3.5 billion people combined.
…think about that for five seconds…
Each of these 80 people holds an average of $23.7 billion.
Want some scale?
$23.7 billion is $36,073.06 every single hour, around the clock, for seventy-five years.
The US is suffering from that same kind of inequality, and it’s getting worse here, too.
If our nation is to be truly secure, we must have a few key pillars firmly in place:
• A strong and widespread middle class (good jobs, good wages and fair prices)
• A well-educated populace (inexpensive quality university)
• Good quality, low cost healthcare for everyone (a single-payer national health system)
• A healthy biosphere (tough environmental regulations)
• Cheap clean abundant energy (a ‘moonshot’ attitude on solar power)
• Honest elections and honorable public servants (an end to all forms of bribery)
The last of these six pillars is the first place we need to start… because, without that central pillar, none of the others will stand.
The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that has taken our state and national Capitols by storm.
The words of Abraham Lincoln illuminate the danger of inaction against the fixated and methodical army of corporate lobbyists – 11,000 strong and pouring out bribery at an average of $6 million per congressperson in 2012 alone…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Good government is how We the People defend our Public Commons and advance our Common Good. Good government won’t come from people who hate government.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others.
As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll be slaves to greed and cowardice.