Yessiree, if there were only one thing left that I would ever love about the U.S. of A., it would certainly be the document created to be the supreme law of the land.
The United States Constitution may have a somewhat chequered past with various parties in its interpretation and implementation, but it’s that very fluctuation and ongoing evolving dialogue about its meaning and significance which makes it so enduring and useful over the decades of our country’s history.
Even during the term of one President or another who I have absolutely despised sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, my faith in the wisdom and basic principles of justice which the Constitution puts forth has helped me to cope with the disagreeable times and also has ensured my sense of hope in the future of our nation.
In a very similar way that two people develop a loving and trusting relationship toward each other, I feel that in order for me to love the Constitution, I need to accept the whole of the document. I also need to be able to work out and rationalize the controversies, real or perceived faults, and such.
That’s why I can’t seem to help but be both perplexed and amused with the number of folks who had seemingly fallen asleep during the part of their junior high school civics class when their respective teachers started to go over the points regarding the three branches of government as designed by the United States Constitution. This relative ignorance seems to be particularly showing in these people when they find a decision at the Federal judicial level to be disagreeable to their personal opinion or moral principles.
Oh sure, there’s some decisions which have made it all the way up to the Supreme Court (and these matters of contention usually do) which I have found, throughout history, to be what I would personally condemn as reprehensible. A few examples that I can come up with are:
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Scott v. Sandford , 60 U.S. 393 (1857). Now that, I don’t think that was a highlight in American civil rights history, but rather a lowlight, ya know whut I’m sayin?
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Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). IMHO, this was a particularly suckass move by the SCOTUS.
-Then there’s
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), which wasn’t exactly a cause for celebration on the part of the nation’s working class.
Then again, I feel like there were brighter spots for me to contemplate, like:
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Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). For some reason, 1954 seemed to be a year when the Supremes started to get it right in general.
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Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Married couples are entitled to a right to privacy in how they conduct their boudoir activities. Fancy that.
-And on a sorta related note, there’s
Loving v.Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). “Racial Integrity”, eh, Virginia? Nice try. But no, not really, not even close. “Racial Intolerance Act of 1924”, retrospectively, is probably a more accurate term for what I feel this particular Supreme Court decision had flushed down the toilet of history.
The point I’m trying to make: regardless of the acts of our various branches of government, there has never been any need for me to throw the baby out with the bathwater and dismiss the role of an entire branch of the Fed just because I disagree with its decision. So next time I hear someone start rambling on about “activist judges” and how he or she moans about how the vote of the people has been dismissed by a court decision, or some stupid shit like that, I’ll just be hopeful that someday, people who talk like that will someday stumble across a copy of the U.S. Constitution, read it a bit more carefully (or, Hell, for many of them it would seem, actually bother to read it for once), and finally get a clue.
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