As the 2008 presidential election approaches, it is both interesting and illuminating to observe the trends of our political discourse: factions, groups, special-interest lobbies, and coalitions rule the day, and all thought of Joe and Jane American Citizen as individuals has fled our minds completely.
Our candidates long ago quit considering us as a collection of people: These days we're merely members of a herd, whether that be the "steel puddlers of Ohio" or "the senior citizens of Florida" or the "economically blighted of the Heartland," and it is taken as normal and natural that we, in turn, will evaluate candidates on their ability to manipulate the power structure for the benefit of ... (fill in the blank).
The candidates gaining election will take their constitutional oaths, and I will wonder, as they do, whether you, when you voted for them, attached any degree of importance to their attitudes about America's founding documents.
Little priority is being given to those words on paper, yet they are the documents that founded the United States. For good or evil they are the starting point out of which the nature and fabric of our culture spring; they are the very manner in which we have chosen to organize ourselves politically and economically.
For generations from the Revolutionary War on down, those documents have served this nation well in times of crisis, and were the source of our unprecedented success both domestically and in our relationship with the wider world around us. What America offered on both levels was clear: to the individual citizen, a measure of freedom and opportunity unparalleled in human history; and to the rest of humanity, a shining "beacon of hope" that they, too, could choose those patterns for themselves and experience the peace, strength, and stability that they create.
While some folks in other nations attempted to alter the political states in which they found themselves embedded, most of the people expressing an interest in such a way of life simply came here instead. Drawn by the magnetic allure of the explosion of liberty and productivity that characterized our country's youth, people fled their oppressive states and came here by the millions and millions. Yet, instead of constantly fighting and warring with one another the way they did in Europe and elsewhere, the "melting pot" of America's population worked together in carving a magnificent civilization out of a virtual wilderness.
What was the difference? What made it work here and not there? Sure, part of it was that frontier and the huge availability of natural resources. Part of it - but not all of it. Nor, in my opinion, even most of it. I'll tell you the difference: It was those documents. Those ideas. The indomitable spirit of the human mind as it was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Just a scant few pages of words on paper, yes, but ideas will always fire and drive the hearts and hopes of men, and those ideas were revolutionary: They swept away the castes and the controls and proudly proclaimed the supremacy of the Rights of Man; they announced loudly and clearly that every citizen had their "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; they blew the nonobjective role of the state sky-high and established instead a rule of law that provided for an orderly, moral, and rational code of conduct for human activity.
Those ideas are the distilled, focused, and condensed wisdom of all that our Founding Fathers had to offer us; they are a mighty gift. Those ideas are nothing less than the culmination of thousands of years of social and political development and are, in essence, the sharpest and most profound limitation on the ability of one man to control another ever devised. No words are perfect, but we ignore or evade the meaning and intent of such words at our own deadly peril.
Read them. Just words on paper, I know. But read them anyway, and ponder them, and look at the slate of candidates posturing for your attention: Do they support the convictions expressed in those ideas? Do you see the clarity of purpose, the intellectual integrity, and the respect for the civilized rule of law that characterized the foundation and establishment of our Republic?
Or do you see schemers, abusers, and power-seekers who believe their vision of how you should live is better? And, if so, as you vote, consider, and beware: For that belief is the stuff of which tyrannies are made.\
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine and a freelance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
