Proud American?

Today's the 4th of July, the day people celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration of Independence is a somewhat flawed, but largely sublime philosophical declaration that Governments serve their people, not the other way around.  The government cannot be unjust to even a single citizen and maintain its moral status as sovereign.  But when the Constitution came out ten years later or so, it fell well short of the feelings and philosophy embedded in the Declaration.

If everyone has the right to liberty, how could over 10% of our population be slaves?  Why couldn't women vote, or even go to college?  Why did the Constitution say we had 'lots of extra rights' in the 9th and 10th amendments, but not define them, leaving it anyone's guess what they could have intended?  Did we really want a federal government with delineated powers, instead of delineated goals?  The absurdity of the situation even struck Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the constitution, when he was president and had to start observing it.  When Napoleon offered to sell him the Louisiana Purchase, the best deal in history, Thomas Jefferson was frustrated to wonder where in the Constitution Presidents, or any branch of government, had the authority to buy it.  Nowhere in the Constitution does it say Congress can buy land.  Ultimately Jefferson ignored his own Constitution and did what he felt was right for America -- ie, he immediately scrapped delineated powers and moved to 'ensuring the general welfare.'  In fact, the preamble of the Constitution makes more sense and is a better legal guide than the Constitution itself, because it delineated extremely good goals for the United States federal government, instead of any particular powers, and assumes implicitly that it has whatever powers are necessary to achieve said goals.

The Supreme Court, in its first ruling, threw out the literal meaning of the Constitution which just established it as the highest court in the land, meant to handle inter-state cases and other touchy situations, and turned itself into a court that could review the constitutionality of various laws.  No one was upset by this coup, they just went along with it because they realized the Constitution was dumb and the Supreme Court was better off having this ability -- especially since the Constitution is written so poorly that no one could guess what it really means.  Just consider this 2nd Amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

First off, this is just terrible English.  I'm not even sure it can grammatically exist.  But in any event, no one knows whether people could keep and bear arms only so long as they served in the militia, or whether the right to bear arms was only valid so long as a militia was necessary to the security of a free State, or what. Two hundred fifty years later we finally had a Supreme Court case on what the hell the right to bear arms meant, and the judges decided it extended to individuals, not just the 'people' or the 'militia.'  But that's only because the justices were conservative at the time, the next time the court is liberal, they'll discover the Constitution meant the exact opposite thing and individuals don't have the right to bear arms.  Almost every sentence in the Constitution is just as vague, contradictory, and legal nonsense.  Legal contracts are written much clearer these days for routine business, and yet our founding legal contract would not be accepted by any law code as valid, for simply not being written clearly enough to mean much of anything.

There is nothing to get excited about when it comes to our elections either.  It took multiple amendments to give everyone the right to vote.  Even assuming a franchise should be limited, it is absolutely wrong and arbitrary to discriminate by arbitrary categories like race or sex.  A black nobel prize winning physicist has no right to vote, but a white retard felon can still ooze his way into the voting booth and make his opinion known?  A heroin addicted beggar can vote if he's a man, but a billionaire CEO woman can't because she's just a 'dumb broad' and 'shouldn't worry her pretty little head over it.'  It's outrageous in two senses, the idea that all white men have a better idea of how our country should be than anyone else, and the idea that blacks, women, and other groups don't have a right to protect their interests.  The entire point of the Constitution was to give a voice to the people, to require their consent before government could do anything.  By not allowing vast sections of the population to vote, it became easy to abuse those sections through unjust laws.

If the Constitution wanted, it could have set out some sort of property clause, or education clause, before allowing someone to vote.  Then everyone equally, no matter what their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc had the same opportunity to become a voter, while still weeding out voters who might not have the intelligence or public-mindedness to vote responsibly.  Even this limit is suspicious though, because it opens up a doorway for the rich and the intelligent to pass laws that abuse the poor and the stupid.  Poor and stupid people have rights and feelings too, and it would be all too easy to lose all of our labor laws because the rich are 'tired' of having to pay a fair wage to their employees.  Once you start excluding people from the vote, the public interest will inevitably twist into a private interest of whoever is voting, at the price of the country as a whole.

There is little reason for a President instead of a Prime Minister.  It seems as though America just wanted a King with a new title, someone who could be the dignitary who negotiated with foreigners and performed various ceremonies.  The rest of the democratic world has gotten along just fine without one.  Making every election in each congressional district winner takes all has also severely distorted our democracy.  While the rest of the world makes sure every vote counts -- by giving proportional representation to each party according to the percentage of voters it received, America can only support two parties at a time and the loser goes home with nothing.  Yet again, voters who can't vote, because they can't accept either party platform, have nowhere to go and end up being abused victims of those who do like those platforms.  Most of the country is disenfranchised just through lack of options, and the rule that only winners can take office.  The Constitution has made it so most votes are thrown out anyway.  Consider the electoral college, where if a state is won for the Republicans 51% to 49% Democrat, all the electoral college votes of that state are lumped into the Republican bracket.  We elect our presidents not based on who won the popular vote, the only possible fair system, but this arcane, and ridiculously unfair, system that throws out almost half the voters of each state and gives huge bonuses to the weight of voters in small states as opposed to large ones, due to the minimum of 3 votes each state gets regardless of population.  This is all thanks to the Constitution that decided the people ultimately couldn't be trusted and 'dignitaries' should make the 'real' decision with the election considered just a poll with no binding power.

Two hundred fifty years later, it's obvious our Constitution is outdated and incompetent.  It is ridiculous to believe in this era of reason and progress that our Founding Fathers have the best possible formulation for government and that no improvements can be made.  We have made progress in every other field of thought, so why wouldn't we be able to improve our system of Government?

The 4th of July, a time we are supposed to be thankful for our Founding Father's decision to declare independence and set up a new American state with a new American constitution, makes less sense the further away from it time passes.  Was being part of Britain all that bad?  Did the original American nation have anything to be proud of, compared to our non-discriminatory, fair and equal society of today?  Has our Constitution really been of service to us, or just a hindrance that eventually plunged us into a terrible Civil War?  Can we really be said to be following a Constitution at all anymore, when none of the laws we pass are Constitutional by any stretch of the imagination?  (Just tell me where the Constitution gave Congress the right to force people to buy health insurance, I'd love to see where that clause was -- right next to supporting a navy and coining money, right?)  Instead of 1776, we would be better off celebrating 1965, the first time in American history there were no second class citizens, and the first time in our history our laws matched the promise of equality and rights for all in our Declaration of Independence.  Most Americans feel much prouder of that year than the old one.

We are told that the 4th of July celebrates something else, Americanism.  Patriotism.  The proposition upon which our proposition nation is built.  All Americans, whether settlers with a five hundred year history in this land, or immigrants who just got off the boat, can equally celebrate the 4th of July, because we're all equally Americans who have bought into the 'American Ideal.'  This is ridiculous, because no one can tell me what that ideal is.  It appears to me that our elections are still hotly contested, and no one yet agrees what the 'foundation' or 'proposition' or 'American Ideal' is.  Some will say capitalism, others will say diversity, others will say freedom, others will say Christianity, still others will say as leaders and policemen of the world, and so on.  There are as many 'propositions' as propositioners.  Unless everyone could actually agree what America should be and what goals America should serve, there is no way we can all celebrate the 4th of July as our binding contract that connects us with all our fellow citizens.  At most it connects us with all other members of our political party.  Immigrants are encouraged to come to America, people who can't even speak English, because we are assured they share our Dream.  America is just an idea, anyone outside our borders who agrees with the American Ideal, is an American at heart, and should be allowed to immigrate to America.  Unfortunately, we have no American Ideal test, that could verify the values of potential immigrants, because our current citizenry could never agree about one in the first place.  We just have to take immigrants on their word that they're very patriotic and their dreams are very wonderful.

This isn't to say we shouldn't celebrate America, or refuse to say we're proud Americans.  America is a much better place today than when it was founded.  There are many things to be proud of today, starting with our per capita GDP of $40,000+.  We have given a great blessing to our people, a nation overwhelmingly rich that no one in the past could even dream of obtaining.  And this wealth is almost unique to Americans.  Even Canada, Europe, Japan, and other civilized regions lag far behind.  Another thing we can celebrate is our unique 1st Amendment rights, that makes us freer men than anyone else on Earth.  We can celebrate the beautiful continent we created out of a barren wilderness over hundreds of years of effort, the skyscrapers that dominate skylines that buffalo used to roam.  We can celebrate the size of our population and might of our armies, the only superpower in the world.  We can celebrate the American flag that still stands alone on the Moon, fifty years later we remain the only people, the only country, great enough to land humans somewhere other than Earth.  I completely disagree with Michelle Obama, who says she has never been proud of America before they elected her husband to the Presidency.  I'm proud of so much American history, so many American feats, and so many American personages.  It was an American, admiral Perry, who forced Japan to abandon its samurai feudalism and rejoin the modern world.  Americans dug the Panama Canal and thereby aided world commerce.  Americans win all the Nobel Prizes that designate the most important contributors to scientific progress.  Americans were merciful to their defeated rivals Germany and Japan, rebuilt them with their own money, and then became firm allies and trading partners with once hated enemies.  It was a gesture of a loving and great people, almost unprecedented in the annals of history.  It was America that saved the world from Communism.  Our blood and treasure was spilled for fifty years in order to save far away lands from unprecedented evil.  (Communism eventually ended up killing 100 million people, but without America God knows where the death toll would have stopped.)

The 4th of July is as good a day as any to announce how proud you are to be an American.  There are more things to be proud about, as an American, than practically any other nation can claim on Earth.  It's hard to be a proud Bolivian, after all -- what the hell have they done?  But a proud American is easy.  Just look around you for two seconds -- how could you not love this beautiful land?  Saying "I love my country, past, present, and hopefully future," then eating ice cream and watching fireworks, is not a bad holiday at all.