{"id":778,"date":"2023-08-25T11:47:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/?p=778"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:47:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:47:02","slug":"what-the-constitution-means-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/what-the-constitution-means-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Constitution Means to ME"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rough Draft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been trying to find a way to write about democracy in the United States for a while, especially the way we Americans think of our own nation and ideas of democratic freedom. The general myth most of us have come to accept is that America was the first country to reject monarchy and embark on the experiment of democracy, and is therefore the best at it. We\u2019re taught that Lafayette carried the idea of democratic revolution right across the ocean to France and that our military has towed freedom behind tanks to Europe and on the wings of B-52 bombers to the Middle East and Asia. It\u2019s no surprise that so many judges in the US are \u201coriginalists\u201d when, despite our founding document having been expressly written to be imperfect and amendable, we\u2019re taught that this piece of paper is the cornerstone of global democracy, a religiously venerated text that has led countless nations on Earth to freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revisions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As us lefties know, these foundational teachings are myths. The constitution was really only written to protect white landowning men and, though attempts have been made to extend Chief Justice Douglas\u2019s penumbra<\/a> over the rest of us, the document as it stands is poorly suited to today\u2019s world. US militarism\u2019s impact on other governments has at best spread neoliberalism and US multinational power<\/a> and at worst upended democracies in favor of authoritarianism<\/a>. This brings up the most pervasive myth of our constitution: that the document is still the most contemporary and experimental form of democracy out there. When folks in the United States look out to other Western democracies, we see old places: Germany, Italy, the UK; places of stuffy baroque ballrooms and marble arches. America, in contrast, is pluckily modern and devoid of any historical baggage<\/a> with our uniform suburban streets and endless frontier. But in conflating the cultural history of other Western democracies with their governments, Americans forget that most governments, in the West and around the globe, are less than a century old and have founding documents that, though coming from the same lineage as the US constitution, are written expressly in conversation with the politics of today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WWII\u2019s earth-shaking fascist violence led to the formation of many of these more contemporary governments. France discarded no less than three governments in the five years following the second World War: the Nazi\/authoritarian Vichy government fell away to the Provisional Government of the French Republic in 1944 which then gave way to the Fourth Republic in 1946 and today\u2019s Fifth Republic in 1948. After the Netherlands was liberated from Nazi control in 1945 the government was reformed a second time in 1954 in an attempt to deal with its history of colonialism. Germany, of course, was divided in four pieces in 1945 which became two pieces in 1948 and was united into the state we recognize today in 1990. The founding documents of these governments and the many others reorganized in the late 20th century include tools intended expressly to prevent an authoritarian regime from taking hold. But America won the war, and because we were the ones who brought democracy back to the world, we never had to change or examine who we really needed to be as a nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When American journalists report on ranked-choice voting theatrics in Ireland or the great lengths India goes to get everyone access to a voting machine these are spoken about as quirks of individual voting systems. But they aren\u2019t quirks; they\u2019re tools developed through experience with empire and fascism to help governments serve their people, tools our antiquated constitution doesn\u2019t have. Some things on my democracy wishlist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n