Constitutionland
I thought that I’d start off with some stuff from my earlier days of media. This is a 2010 piece that was written immediately after the foiled Times Square terrorist bombing that year.
ConstitutionLand
First there was Disneyland - the “happiest place on earth”. Tommorowland, Frontierland, Adventureland – sanitized versions of history and the future seen through rose-colored glasses. Designed to entertain while not quite informing, but oh you feel good in there. It wasn’t real, but you wanted it to be because it was better than the real thing.
In the 1970's the major brewers - Miller and Anheuser-Busch, thought it would be a good idea to water down their beer, thus saving costs. It could charge the same as the unwatered down beer which increased profits. It could market these products to take advantage of the growing fitness craze. Everyone remembers "less filling / tastes great". One wonders what dockyard worker complained of beer bloat as the economy slipped into the last great crisis. So we had Beer Lite, The brewers sought to sponsor amusement parks. Busch Gardens was a popular side trip to those visiting the new Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Beerland is born. It looks like beer, but it really wasn't anymore. And it wasn’t quite as good as the real thing.
Back in the 1990s, under the guiding hand of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, a partnership was formed with the Disney Company. Rudy vowed to make Times Square family friendly, and got a commitment from Disney to invest in the area, restoring theaters and mounting productions of their popular movies on the live stage. It sparked a "revival" of the theater district as producers found that they could do rewrites of old movies and TV shows, and even popular singers songbooks. These retreads proved commercially popular.
Rudy held up his end of the bargain - cleaning out the prostitutes, drug dealers, homeless and three-card monty scammers. It was called the Disneyfication of Times Square. A prominent New York comedian commented that the place had turned into "Mouseschwitz". All of the criminals and dross were replaced with harmless caricatures of prostitutes and drug dealers, who entertained the tourists with the flavor of "New York" without actually risking any crime or danger. The theaters were filled with entertainment but lacking in that one ingredient that made the New York experience unique - culture.
It was New York Lite. Or NewYorkLand. It was no longer New York City. You could get the same experience at the New York New York Casino in Las Vegas. The tourists ate it up because they didn't know any better. The native New Yorkers appreciated the clean up, but were sad as well that the city had lost its bold flavor, and instead was turned into a bland, homogenized pablum. It looked like New York City, but it really wasn't anymore. It was better, but at what cost?
In 1787, an amazing document was created - The Constitution of the United States. It laid the foundation for what was to become the sole superpower on the planet. A nation in which individual liberty and initiative would create the wealthiest, most powerful nation of all time. A nation so blessed with opportunity that people from all over the planet can look to the poorest among us and choose even that over what their current situation was. They did and they do. The model of a limited government that prioritized individual liberty over governmental control brought this about.
There were, of course, things kicked down the road in 1787. Slavery was chief among them, as well as poor dealings with the Native Americans. All in all though, this unique American experiment was created out of an ideal, and for nearly 150 years chugged along in an effort to make itself, in Abraham Lincoln's words "more perfect".
In the early 1900's social science came into formal being. It argued that if people of expertise would study and apply solutions to problems in the structure of a given society, society could be improved, literally to the point of perfection. In theory, no one could really object to the creation of a society that had no flaws. This was the birth of the Progressive Movement.
There have been great successes in Progressivism. Among them are Woman's suffrage, safer foods, and the granting of racial equality under the law. There have been periods of over-reach as well. It is generally at the times of over-reach that the American public makes its voice heard, and the federal government is forced to respond. Joe McCarthy, LBJ, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were all brought down by a public that was fed up Bill Clinton had his majority in the Congress stripped away in 1994 as the public rejected his agenda in favor of something more measured and practical.
The tug-of-war between individual liberty and a functioning and secure society is always contentious. When one holds to the Constitution, there is a firm basis for agreement in the country. All elected representatives swear an oath to uphold the Constitution because the Founders understood this. It is when we wander from the Constitution that we head into troubled waters.
There has been a gradual erosion of personal liberty that was grudgingly given by the citizenry at the promise of an improved society. Since 9/11 the erosion has increased dramatically. Nowadays we see security cameras on street corners, strangers go through our underwear at the airport, our trash is inspected and sorted, our lawn sprinklers are monitored. Grass height is measured. Political correctness causes us to censor our words. The non-conformist generation tolerates no non-conformity. We are not secure in our persons and our property.
Our liberty is being gnawed at in seemingly little ways. We are the frog in the pot of warm water atop the stove, and in trying to run our day to day lives most do not notice the temperature going up. Without that awareness we will soon be cooked.
How do we find the federal government outlined in the Constitution in today’s circumstance? Our automobile industry is a ward of the state. The mortgage business is a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government. The battle of who decides how best to manage our own bodies continues. Food prices continue to rise because the corn that is the basis of western hemisphere’s food supply is being pumped into our vehicles as subsidized fuel instead. Root causes are ignored while all are equally inconvenienced with cosmetics solutions to malignant problems.
Journeying back to NewYorkLand, our attention is caught by the weekend Time Square bombing attempt. With our lite beer in hand, and with the neighborhood watch peering in the window, we ponder the actions of our federal officials.It has been proposed that the bomber be stripped of his citizenship. Senators Joe Liebermann (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA) this morning introduced legislation declaring anyone committing a terrorist attack against the United States should be granted only the more limited rights accorded to military prisoners caught in acts of sedition (wouldn’t that be an illegal enemy combatant? Didn’t President Bush already do that? Guantanamo anyone?), regardless of citizenship.
This is where the small gnawing away of our liberty becomes deadly serious. Like it or not the Times Square Bumbler is an American citizen. He was granted citizenship so he’s in. The full force of the US Constitution applies to him. He is Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare. Once granted, citizenship cannot be stripped, except by executive order of the President of the United States. It can only be renounced by the individual citizen.
With regard to the Liebermann / Brown proposal, the Constitution is clear. No law may be enacted that abridges any of the rights bestowed to an American citizen. Period. As a citizen the Bumbler is entitled to all of the rights and protections of an American citizen. He will be charged and tried in federal court, and will likely spend the rest of his life fending off the Aryan brotherhood in federal prison. He has already confessed, and the evidence is overwhelming. That does not excuse him from due process or mitigate his Constitutional protections.
The method for dealing with an American citizen who has declared a personal war against the United States is not limiting rights or stripping citizenship. It is the charge of Treason. Treason is the only crime specifically outlined in the Constitution. It is the first and foremost federal crime. All of the hand-wringing is unnecessary. All we need to do is apply the Constitution.
Common Sense Dictates
Our Constitution is being whittled away and being paid lip service. It is no longer our Constitution but a watered-down manual that is not consulted except when convenient - which is now mostly never. The flavor of individual liberty is being homogenized into groupthink. Groupthink is morphing into mob mentality, which may explain why everyone is so angry all the time. Our Constitution is no longer our Constitution. We are being governed by what looks like our Constitution but it really isn’t. It’s Constitution Lite. Welcome to ConstitutionLand. It resembles Disneyland more and more. Soft on facts and more about feeling good than being good. It looks like America but something just isn’t right. It’s missing something. It looks like it could be real, but only the insiders know that it really isn’t. Common Sense requires us to restore the real thing.
Jubal