Cartoon 730: Intelligent

Some points of view are framed by culture. Sometimes it defies logic. There is a saying that history is written by the victor. The American Constitution is a case in point. There have been many authoritarian works written on the constitutional congress, people assigned to negotiate a framework for a new nation. The constitutional congress did a good job of documenting their activities in letters to their families and stakeholders. Over the last half century these works have been pushed out of the education system in favor of mythology.

There was no divine guidance toward an inescapable grand design for the Constitution. It was a synthesis crafted to preserve control by the landed aristocracy and an opportunity for a grand experiment by the intelligentsia. It was a contentious undertaking with numerous compromises and rewrites. The final document was a negotiated framework for the times.

Today there are those that argue the Constitution is an absolute timeless document. Clearly that is not the case. It was document crafted during slavery and resulted in compromise. It precluded women voting. It was also a time when people had a better understanding of Greek democracy. The democracy in Greece only applied to citizens. There was no participation in government by the overwhelming numbers of slaves and servants. When America settled on democracy, it was never envisioned as a general “populous” movement. The government was turned over to accomplished and enlightened people in Congress. Congress was largely autonomous primarily beholding to itself. If the people truly disagreed, they could express their displeasure at election time. But such was the power of the elite it made little difference.

How do we get to where we are today believing in “populous” elections (despite the impact pack of the electoral congress) and an infallible Constitution? It is marketing of a myth. Today the most powerful consistency is clamping down. Wall Street and big business are making certain a real populous election can not occur. They control the media and the courts. Things that are truly “populous”, with a general consensus in society such as gun control, are stopped cold.