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logo    Forked Tongues and Other American Characteristics


Our Constitution contains the following well known preamble which expresses the hopes and dreams of the people who drafted the Constitution.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure  domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Injustice, unfairness of laws and in trade, was of great concern to the people of 1787. People looked forward to a nation with a level playing field, where courts were established with uniformity and where trade inside and outside the borders of the country would be fair and unmolested. The hope and dream of justice has, of course, never been fulfilled. The American legal system is a sport played by lawyers. The prosecutor wins the game by getting a conviction, and the defense attorney wins by getting his client off or a sentence too light to be commensurate with the crime. Although there are rules, these rules are regularly violated by both sides. The prosecution routinely tries to hide exculpatory evidence, and the defense tries to hide or exclude culpatory evidence. The innocent are routinely convicted and the guilty are routinely absolved. Since law is practiced by private individuals whose income depends upon their success and whose success enhances their incomes, the system has given rise to the phrase, "celebrity justice," meaning that those who can afford the best attorneys can expect the best results regardless of what the facts really are. In short, the Union has failed miserably in relation to the goal of establishing justice because the truth has never been the system's object.

And who would even dare to claim that we live in a domestically tranquil nation. Crime is at epidemic proportions. In 2003, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that there were two million people in the nations prisons and jails, a record high. The figures take on an even greater significance when compared to the rates of imprisonment in other nations. The U.S. rate of incarceration of 702 inmates per 100,000 makes the United States the world leader in criminality. This number not only makes a mockery of the phrase, domestic tranquility, it indicates that Americans are a repressed people, since high rates of incarceration are a clear sign that freedom is restricted.

It has been claimed that the whole point of having tranquility, justice, and defense was to promote the general welfareto allow every citizen to benefit from what the government could provide. But who would deny that the special interests that corrupt legislators benefit far more than ordinary citizens?

And finally, do Americans enjoy the blessings of liberty? Well, not to any great extent, as yesterday's decision of the Supreme Court concerning eminent domain amply demonstrates. Americans have now lost their castles. A home is merely another thing that government can confiscate for anything it considers to be a contribution to the general welfare.

But aside from this meager Preamble, the Constitution is entirely devoid of any lofty statement of ideals. It is merely a cold, objective enumeration of the mechanics of government. Yet Americans have always thought of this nation as a highly idealistic place that the world would do well to imitate. Where is this idealism to be found? Certainly not in the Constitution. In fact, it is not to be found in any legally binding document.

Of course, the Declaration of Independence is often cited as a statement of our ideals: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . ." Unfortunately, these ideals were never written into the Constitution and have rarely been recognized in any tangible way by our legislators or Supreme Court judges, because these ideals have no standing as law.

Another document that enshrines ideals that Americans often profess to hold is the Gettysburg Address: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. . . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Unfortunately these ideals also have no legal standing, and it is doubtful that this nation ever had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our nation has had a government, just like those of other nations, that has enshrined the same kind of greed, injustice, corruption, and incivility that we often accuse other governments of. And one can only wonder how this nation's legislatures or courts would have acted if all these ideals had been given legal standing?  Certainly the Supreme Court would never have issued the Dred Scott decision. Racial and ethnic discrimination would have long ago been ameliorated. The wealthy would not have had greater access to justice than the ordinary person.

So just as Chief Red Cloud often said, we speak not only to the world but to ourselves with a forked tongue, and we have earned the world's distrust.

The world wonders how we can have the audacity to criticize others for their poor records on civil rights when we have a history of legally sanctioned discrimination and inequality that continues to this day. The world wonders how we can have the audacity to tell other nations not to interfere in the affairs of their neighbors when we have and continue to interfere into the affairs of other nations? The world wonders how we can have the audacity to tell other nations to control their borders to prevent the infiltration of enemies of the United Sates from entering nations that we seek to control while, as the government of Syria rightly pointed out yesterday, we cannot control our own borders.

Yes, this nation is distrusted and disliked, and in our sanctimonious self-righteousness we wonder why. Well, the reason is that we Americans have not yet learned the merits of conforming to what we preach and of preaching the truth. And we are and shall continue to bear the consequences of that failure. (6/24/2005)