There is an old admonition that says it’s usually viewed as both cruel and inefficient to cut a dog’s tail off one small piece at a time. For everybody’s sake, especially the dog's, it’s better to go ahead and cut the whole dang thing off in one fell swoop. However, in politics, which is not expected to be either efficient or kindly, cutting up things one piece at a time is frequently considered both strategic and pragmatic. The general population is considered to be too shortsighted and ignorant to notice where this strategy of changing things, “just a little bit” is really going.
Many of us poor ignorant citizens actually are a little more intelligent than your average fence post and actually can figure where some things are actually headed. In fact, we actually understand both the history and concept of what is called in constitutional law, The Doctrine of Original Intent. What it used to mean before all this legal tail snipping began after World War II is that it is the duty of all appointed judges, especially the Supreme Court of the United States and its state-wide ancillary support systems, to pass every constitution appeal past the original intent doctrine of the U.S. Constitution in order to determine its correct accordance with that document.
It don’t work like that no more!
What has now happened is that The Doctrine of Original Intent of the constitution’s founders has been replaced and us country bumpkins are supposed to shut up and like it. The current legal test runs like this: “Us judges don’t care anymore about what the founders meant by their legal language back there in the late seventeen hundreds. Our job is to re-interpret their intents based on us judges’ assessment of what today’s current cultural norms demand, at least according to our educated opinions. And by the way, what we say is not subject to appeal no matter what the original intent was in terms of separate powers because the citizens is too stupid and self-absorbed to challenge us anyway.”
Golly, gee folks, maybe we really are as stupid and mollified as them smart lawyers say we are. We complain about things, ever now and again, but we ain’t done much about it over the last fifty years or so. So why don’t we just put the whole matter to one of them there national votes or something and just abolish the whole constitution and cut the dang tail off in one big piece? It would do two things: 1) rescue us from the absurd charade we been playing, 2) get the whole thing up on the table and stop the playing around. Besides that, them stupid founders, what did those uninformed country folk know about modern times, science and the hidden rights we can see in their silly legal ramblings that them uptight folks couldn’t even see themselves?
So there you have it, folks. What I propose is simple. Let’s have a vote or at least a national debate from top to bottom around this here issue. Let’s cut off the tail or let it alone to wag.
Principle Based Evaluation: The Constitution of the United States is our final and binding standard of all US law (as it should be in all nations). Modernity threatens to negate the proven foundations of the past. We need to raise a cry that true radicalism is returning to the ancient paths.
For more information on the author, Dennis Peacocke, go to: http://www.gostrategic.org/
