The Blessings (And Curse) Of The Constitution
The Senate is in an uproar about the issue of approving the
nomination of certain judges. There are vocal supporters for and
against traditional techniques of the filibuster. There are
others working hard to identify options and compromises to avoid
a head-to-head battle that will leave one side staggering.
The rest of the country looks on: in confusion, in awe, in
indifference, in disgust. We never really trust politicians
anyway so why should their internal disagreements mean a hill of
beans to the working stiff on the street?
The critical importance to every citizen, no matter the social
level or way of life, is that the system has to work or we have
no rules, no structure, no boundaries to mark our place. We all
have differing opinions about how to rule the world. Senators
and Judges have varying ideas also. The truth is that when
Senators and Judges, individually and then collectively, make
decisions about issues, we all have to live with the results.
One of the great strengths of the Constitution is that it
provides a framework for our society but is also extremely
flexible. That flexibility is constantly pulled and stretched by
the myriad of meanings that can be read into its written form.
Over the centuries, its principles have been interpreted, and
reinterpreted, the meanings changed as our society changed.
We hope, as no doubt the founding fathers hoped, that in the
long term opposing forces should balance each other out and a
centrist consensus should emerge that keeps us moving in a
generally positive direction. For more than two hundred years,
that has successfully transpired. While we applaud the
robustness of a document that has weathered the slings and
arrows of time so deftly, we must also look at events in the
short term and the trauma they may impose.
Long before the abolition of slavery, there was the degradation
of thousands of human lives, treated, auctioned, bullwhipped,
and ravaged like livestock, all under the auspices of the
Constitution.
Before Brown vs. Board of Education, there was Plessy vs.
Ferguson and thousands of black children were restricted to
separate educational facilities, patently unequal in every
resource: money, personnel, books, supplies, and expectations.
Recourse was banned because the Constitution countenanced such a
lie.
Decades before Roe vs. Wade, doctors were fully competent to
perform clinically safe abortions. Yet thousands of women died
in backrooms, in Mexican hotel rooms, and in the parlors of
unlicensed midwives.
Each time a decision is made about what the Constitution
"really" means, someone gets hurt.
Abolition saved the slaves but economically destroyed the Old
South. Desegregation of schools helped black children embrace
the hope of a better life but bankrupted marginal communities
who already had severely limited resources. Legal abortion saved
the lives, and lifestyles, of thousands of women but destroyed
the possibilities inherent in those fetuses we threw so casually
away.
It is in their recognition of the power inherent in any one
person's, or group's, ability to interpret the Constitution for
us all, that the feuding Senators deserve our respect. On each
side, they seek to protect their chosen electorate from the
"excesses" of the other side. They feel responsible for averting
the emotional carnage that extreme views, of any persuasion,
impose on the general populace.
It would be easy to simply look at the long haul and calculate
that "everything will work out" in the end. Unfortunately, the
long haul may mean many lifetimes and we have only one to live -
the "short term" incarnate.
It would behoove all of us, no matter our views, no matter our
political position, to seek out and identify those our ideas
would hurt and think, before we speak or act, how such harm
might be minimalized.