Every few years some citizens discover that whatever administration is then in power is shredding the U.S. Constitution and endangering freedom.
It happens when the Republicans are in charge; it happens when the Democrats are in charge.
What is troubling about the current constitutional angst is the glib ease with which so many on the right – including elected officials – brand those with whom they disagree as anti-American or worse. People who were elected under the laws and constitution are termed tyrants, and the language of violence permeates and airwaves and the Internet. The rhetoric echoes that heard in the period prior to secession.
May I suggest that the greater danger to the constitution comes not from a piece of legislation but from one group of Americans deciding that the only “true Americans” are those who share their views.
If we cannot accept that people can love this country as much as we do and still have different ideas about the best course for the nation, then freedom for all of us is in grave danger.
As Judge Learned Hand put it in a 1944 speech at “I am an American Day” ceremonies in New York:
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
"What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
