{"id":1432638,"date":"2024-01-08T06:32:14","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T06:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=310036"},"modified":"2024-01-08T06:32:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T06:32:14","slug":"can-constitutional-literacy-save-us-from-the-drift-to-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/08\/can-constitutional-literacy-save-us-from-the-drift-to-tyranny\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Constitutional Literacy Save Us From the Drift to Tyranny?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of us are old enough to remember the\u00a0Andy Griffith Show<\/a>\u00a0(1960-68, CBS), including the hilariously revealing\u00a0November 1963 episode<\/a>, where Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts) attempts to recite the Preamble to the Constitution from memory.<\/p>\n

Showing his 8th<\/sup>-grade history book to Mayberry town Sheriff Andy Taylor, he says with characteristic bluster, \u201cThere\u2019s things right there in that book I learned that I still remember to this day.\u201d Turning the book\u2019s pages to the Constitution, he says, \u201cWe had to memorize the Preamble, and I still remember it.\u201d He then starts to demonstrate in a raised voice: \u201cConstitution of the United States.\u201d Pausing, his mind obviously gone completely blank, he pleads, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just give me the first word, and I\u2019ll know the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy: \u201cOkay. We. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Barney: \u201cWe. . . . We? Are you sure?\u201d Uncomfortable pause, then in loud voice: \u201cWE. . . .\u201d Another clueless pause.<\/p>\n

Andy: \u201cThe. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Barney: \u201cThe.\u201d Clueless pause. \u201cWe, the. . . .\u201d Uncomfortable, clueless pause.<\/p>\n

Andy, through pursed lips: \u201cPpp . . . People.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barney: \u201cWe, the people . . . We, the people (louder) . . . We, the people (even louder). . . .\u201d Head agonizingly buried in hands.<\/p>\n

This goes on for interminable minutes, with Andy patiently saying each word, Barney then painfully repeating, until the end when Andy finishes the last words himself: \u201c. . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.\u201d At which point, Barney smugly states, \u201cI got it. You read something, you learn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHumor,\u201d\u00a0Mark Twain<\/a>\u00a0told us<\/u>, \u201cis the good-natured side of a truth.\u201d To laugh at Barney Fife\u2019s half-century-old predicament is to look into the mirror today. If you are largely ignorant of the substantive content of the Constitution,\u00a0you aren\u2019t alone<\/a>. Even those who, by law, are required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution \u2013 members of the U.S. military and federal civil servants, for example \u2013 are highly unlikely to have reflected on its content since they raised their right hand many years ago. That should alarm us, not reassure us, as we face the prospect ahead of the possible return to office of Donald Trump. Constitutional literacy \u2013 and the associated will to make the provisions of this landmark guiding document a reality \u2013 could be our only salvation if that eventuality comes to pass.<\/p>\n

The Constitution\u2019s Preamble that Barney Fife muffed should command our primary attention above all else. That seems counterintuitive, since the preamble to any document is typically little more than cosmetic rhetorical window dressing for the substance expected to follow.<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t the case here, though, for this Preamble is what we might call America\u2019s Security Credo. Judged collectively, the precepts enumerated in the Preamble \u2013 justice, domestic tranquility, the\u00a0common<\/em>\u00a0defense, the\u00a0general<\/em>\u00a0welfare, liberty for ourselves for all time \u2013 are what make us secure where they are present, insecure where they are absent.<\/p>\n

But it is the prefatory phrase that matters most: \u201cWe the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.\u201d\u00a0We<\/em>\u00a0(all of us) are, by design, a nation; a nation of laws; a nation of immigrants,\u00a0E pluribus unum<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cOut of many, one\u201d); a People born of many peoples, all united into one by a common identity, a common set of values; a \u201cmelting pot\u201d (with due apologies to \u201ctossed salad\u201d advocates) of differences assimilated into a unified whole as Americans.<\/p>\n

In the face of a Trump return to office, national unity will come at a premium. Unity \u2013 of purpose, of effort, of action \u2013 is a distinctly strategic concept known to, but not uniformly achieved, by practitioners of statecraft, domestic and international. When those in authority exercise power \u2013 to get their way, to get what they want, to elicit deference from others \u2013 their ability to do so is a function of not only the wherewithal at their disposal but also the consensual will of the people they presume to represent and lead. National will and national unity, undergirded by the glue of social cohesion, are thus conjoined.<\/p>\n

Many have been the calls by figures of note over time for national unity and the Union of our federal republic. In his\u00a01796 Farewell Address<\/a>\u00a0(drafted by Alexander Hamilton, delivered in written form, rather than orally), George Washington issued a clarion call that inveighed against the self-serving factions that James Madison had previously critiqued in\u00a0Federalist 10<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Alexis de Tocqueville, the perceptive early 19th<\/sup>-century French observer of\u00a0Democracy in America<\/em>, would later (1835-1840)\u00a0observe<\/a>: \u201cIt is clear that if each citizen [in American democracy], as he becomes individually weaker and consequently more incapable in isolation of preserving his freedom, does not learn the art of uniting with those like him to defend it, tyranny will necessarily grow with equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before he became President (1858), Abraham Lincoln would\u00a0famously claim<\/a>: \u201cA house divided against itself cannot stand.\u201d Then, as President, his steadfast aim throughout the Civil War was to preserve or restore the Union, even to the\u00a0extreme of stating<\/a>: \u201cMy paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, America is\u00a0more divided than it has ever been since the Civil War<\/a>, a state of affairs fed by and exploited by Trump to the utmost. His strategy is to\u00a0divide and conquer<\/a>, to pit us Little People and our many demographic, ideological, and cultural differences against one another, so that only he wins, while we are forever at one another\u2019s throats.<\/p>\n

Think of the innumerable forms of unity or disunity that characterize us as a people: race and ethnicity, gender, age, social class, religion, sexual orientation, domicile, political affiliation, ideological orientation, profession, among others. A case could be made that the degree of social affinity between and among us \u2013 from intolerance to tolerance to empathy to respect to emulation \u2013 is more or less directly proportional to the level of intellectual development we are able and willing to achieve \u2013 from ignorance to awareness to knowledge to understanding to wisdom. In this sense, our ability to achieve and maintain unity in the face of impending tyranny is, at root, an intellectual enterprise \u2013 notwithstanding the enduring embrace of\u00a0Anti-Intellectualism in American Life<\/em><\/a>, which historian Richard Hofstadter reminded us is our chosen lot 60 years ago.<\/p>\n

Now, reconsider the many grievances (27 of them) our Founding Fathers levied against their oppressor at the time, King George III, in the\u00a0Declaration of Independence<\/a>; to wit:<\/p>\n

+ \u201cHe has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

+ \u201cHe has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

+ \u201cHe has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This led the Founders to conclude: \u201cA Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.\u201d Does this sound familiar?<\/p>\n

Our Founders reacted to the tyranny they were already living under with ideas, but ideas abetted by muskets and artillery pieces. Today, we must act preventively or preemptively against tyranny that could yet be visited upon us, also with ideas, but our weapons must take the form of aggressive civic engagement \u2013 votes and demonstrations \u2013 to forestall a hostile takeover of our institutions, the attendant demise of democracy, and the dissolution of the Union. That would be an inexcusable, unforgivable self-inflicted strategic defeat that would eliminate America\u2019s standing as a \u201cshining city on a hill<\/a>\u201d and a so-called\u00a0Great Power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If there is a case to be made that preserving national unity, democracy, and the state of the Union in the face of impending tyranny is a fundamentally intellectual enterprise, then too must it be a totally grassroots popular effort designed to compensate for the massive failings of representative democracy in the Trump era.<\/p>\n

The elitist temperament of America\u2019s Founders that consigned us to a representative form of democracy was given perhaps its most powerful expression by\u00a0Hamilton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But wherever there was Hamilton, there also was his eternal nemesis Jefferson, who made the\u00a0case for popular rule<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In normal times, when even the most self-serving politicians have operated within the institutional imperatives and limits of the Constitution, the Hamiltonian perspective has managed to serve us reasonably well. But the implicit premise of representative democracy, that the best of us govern the rest of us, has shown itself hugely ill-equipped to stand up to the tyranny Trump has shown us and promised us. Where courage, integrity, and selflessness on the part of our representatives are missing, we have no alternative but to turn to ourselves.<\/p>\n

One can\u2019t help here but be reminded of French General Ferdinand\u00a0Foch\u2019s message to his superior<\/a>, General Joseph Joffre, during World War I\u2019s First Battle of the Marne: \u201cHard pressed on my right; my left is in retreat. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Can Constitutional Literacy Save Us From the Drift to Tyranny?\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of us are old enough to remember the\u00a0Andy Griffith Show\u00a0(1960-68, CBS), including the hilariously revealing\u00a0November 1963 episode, where Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts) attempts to recite the Preamble to the Constitution from memory. Showing his 8th-grade history book to Mayberry town Sheriff Andy Taylor, he says with characteristic bluster, \u201cThere\u2019s things right there in More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Can Constitutional Literacy Save Us From the Drift to Tyranny?\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3402,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432639,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432638\/revisions\/1432639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}