THE EXPERIMENT

After watching the Disney streaming of the play "Hamilton" I was inspired to finally get around to reading "The Federalist Papers". They were written cooperatively by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison in 1787. I'm about four pages in when I read this...

 "Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government."

At first glance it may seem to describe the situation in our country before the Civil War, some 60 odd years after these words were penned. Read it twice and you may see it also applies to the current day. Our nation is fragmenting, a process exacerbated by the confusion caused by the current pandemic. We are witnessing political, social and racial division fueled by self interest on the part of ourselves and our leaders. We are being distracted from the true course of the "experiment" that started in 1776. A new nation unlike any other founded on the premise that all men are created equal. In the America hoped for all those years ago we are all citizens with equal standing. Your color, religion, ethnicity, and according to the Supreme Court, your sexual identity does not make any difference in your standing as a free citizen of these United States. Your wealth affords you no more rights than your fellow citizens, nor should your poverty any less. Every American must guarantee all other Americans the freedoms defined in the Constitution. This is not a pick and choose proposition. It is applies to all of us.

This American experiment is not finished. It is a dynamic and living system of ideals, our heritage and birthright. We are to foster those ideals amongst each other and bequeath them to our descendents, as they were to us. It is our responsibility to correct the mistakes of the past and strive for the goals hoped for  so many decades ago. The founders tried their best to do so, continuing despite their own faults and failures. As their descendents, we can do no less.

It is absolutely necessary that we do so. To quote Lincoln's address at Gettysburg..."that this nation, under God, 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."