By Edwin Cooney
Don’t get nervous. I’m not about to analyze either the origin or the meaning of the Constitution of the United States — nothing real heady like that. What I am going to write about this week is what two rather strong-minded Americans believe about its significance and meaning.
Last Thursday night, I called an old friend of mine to catch up on things. I think we may have talked perhaps once in the last five years since we’ve both been away from California. When we first met back in the 1990s, it became immediately clear to both of us that the most compelling aspect of our friendship was, and would always be, the enjoyment we both got out of debating one another. Once, during a fit of pique over Rush Limbaugh’s book titled “The Way Things Ought to Be,” I tossed some keys I was holding at him. He caught the keys and, luckily for me, simply laughed. (After all, he used to be a policeman and would have had no trouble at all handling me!) The point of all this is the vital significance in our attitudes and outlook toward life in 21st Century America.
My friend BD is a “born again” Christian. He’s also a Conservative which means that he’s a strict constructionist as an interpreter of the Constitution. He would have been a member of “The Silent Majority” during the days of Spiro Theodore Agnew, John Newton Mitchell, and Richard Milhous Nixon had those days been extendable. On the other hand, I, although a Christian, am primarily a civic-minded citizen who believes in both equity and equality — contradictory as the two may seem. As a progressive, I believe that the Constitution is a living document flexible enough to fit changing times. BD dismisses me as a “secular humanist.” His two guideposts are the Bible and the Constitution. My two guideposts are my history books and my clearly liberal interpretation of the Bible. I welcome all those immigrants Jesus loves and BD just doesn’t.
Last Thursday night, BD expressed, as he always has, his belief in the ongoing wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Although he concedes that times have changed bringing with that change circumstances that they couldn’t possibly have anticipated, he sees in their construction of it and its implied outlook an essential rigidity which we ignore at our extreme peril. He even defends (hang on tight now!) the electoral college as did men such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.
Most of me, although not all of me, rejects the idea that there exists a group or class of men or women who are sufficiently gifted with the unerring ability to continuously make wise decisions for the ongoing freedom and moral betterment of us all. The part of me that does believe that we not only should but ought to construct bodies of regulation takes this belief from my study of history. Specifically, I have observed that men and women, unless checked, will invariably tend to regulate their opposites or opponents leaving themselves free to savor the profitable and delicious benefits (largely financial) of this free and most vital American society.
BD, as I understand his outlook, would regulate people’s moral attitudes and behavior, leaving their financial behavior or options absolutely alone. During our conversation he used the old worm-eaten “socialist” label to describe the agenda of “the left.” I countered with the long overdue observation that conservative social and political doctrine, when you come right down to the heart of the matter, is antisocial just as much as it is anti-socialist! (There is an element of ideological conservatism that isn’t antisocial. These citizens are generally known as Civil Libertarians. They believe in the best of both worlds: fiscal freedom and civil liberty.)
On the other hand, only with great reluctance would I regulate people’s social behavior. The social behavior I would regulate would be, of course, that behavior that endangers our safety and security. Insofar as I’m concerned, you neither endanger me, my children or grandchildren because you’re gay. Nor do you enhance their future because you are “straight.” These are just some of the matters that my friend BD and I have debated over the years.
Eventually, as you can well imagine, we got down to the present, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. Of course, BD voted for Mr. Trump although his first choice was Senator Cruz. Ultimately, Donald would do.
I came away with several conclusions from my conversation with BD.
Up until the November 22nd, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, Americans, for the most part (despite the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley beforehand), largely lived during a period of political innocence.
That innocence was shattered by the increasing capacity of the national media to bring the whole unsettled and dirty world into our living rooms. Thus Americans who were born after the traumatic events that took place during the Vietnam War and political scandals that followed were exposed to the causes and forces that brought them into being rather than sheltered as my generation was.
Thus, I, who was born during the 1940s, remain in some emotional way secure in the knowledge of what society can be once it chooses to be a certain way. Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, I don’t advocate forcing people to be a certain way through either political or economic means. I think it is my friend BD’s hope that people will one day be compelled to be both righteous and moral — according to both scripture and to the laws of liberty.
BD’s world is logical and profitable which he believes are the blessings of his religious faith. My world is a world based on the Biblical admonition to “love thy neighbor as thy self” which is reinforced by the Golden Rule.
Finally, I’m convinced that neither Donald Trump nor any other single person or body of persons (specifically the Supreme Court of the United States) can overpower the writ of the Constitution of the United States, the 231st birthday of which we celebrate this vary day. My guess is that on that observation my friend BD and I pretty much agree.
Oh, one more thing! With all his rigid righteousness, BD really and truly is not only a good friend to have, he’s a good citizen. During the week of Tuesday, October 17th, 1989, I mostly worried and fretted following the World Series earthquake. BD rolled up his sleeves and without compensation did all he could as a trained ambulance medic to aid and comfort those injured and distressed.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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