A humble suggestion

even for the pros among us

This afternoon, the first sultry Sunday afternoon in the Chesapeake (and likely where you are), I offer a wee request, especially if you are a Yank (no, not necessarily a Yankee fan. They are their own breed). Even if you are Canadian, a Scot, an Englishwoman, Latin American (did I mention last week that every single word at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas is written in both English and Spanish? Fascinating, at least to me.), African, South Asian or from Down Under, you are welcome to savor.

Take a few minutes before Thursday evening to read our Founding Documents. Those documents are merely two—or three if you consider the Amendments to the Constitution as separate since they were ratified over decades following the document entering into effect in 1789 following the ninth state—New Hampshire—ratifying the Constitution.

Read them line by line as if you have never seen them before.

I offer links below.

We trot out these vital words in conversation when it suits us but have we done a refresher since 5th grade as on them? Not likely. Even the lawyers among us who proudly whip paperback editions of the Constitution out of their breast pockets to show they are in physcially connected with it may have not actually read the seven articles or the amendments too often recently unless they are practicing, though perhaps I am wrong.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States are written carefully but not hastily. Scribes entered them by hand in glorious copperplate calligraphy on velum rather than with the edit function of a word processor or a retractable ball point pen. Neither document contains photographs or hyperlinks.

The 1776 document broke our bond with the King and the British people. The second recrafted relationships among peoples in a place under a government, following a few years of spectacular frustration as equal sovereign states dysfunctioned spectacularly as a nation.

Make sure to consider the Preamble to the Constitution. Our Constitution is both written and short, a curiousity to many.

The documents appeared, between 1776 and 1787, in a radically different world than the one where we find ourselves today but did our ideals really change as well? These documents declared certain aspirations. Are we still embodying the radical ideas we declared? We are absolutely practicing some of the lofty vision while others definitely not. I completely understand we are in this moment arguing the meaning of those few written words. Have the concepts changed entirely over the past two and a half centuries? Or we changed? It’s worth pondering for a few moments..

Are these ideals by which we are operating today? Ought they be?

Actions create consequences. I will be look forward to this exercise myself but especially I anticipate hearing how the words strike you in July 2024.

A reader responded to my column yesterday about Brexit by arguing he thought perhaps it could have worked had really good leadership been involved. Where does leadership fit into our country these days as we debate our future?

Thank you for taking time to read this column or any other. Thanks especially to the subscribers who generously fund my work with their commitments.

It’s not the prettiest day here, now with thunderstorms on the radar. I offer the beauty of last evening and, by extension, the closure to the first half of the year minus one sunset.

Be well and be safe. FIN

The Constitution of the United States of America. retrieved at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution

The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776, retrieved at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript