Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

[I sat down to write a journal entry that was a bunch of one- or two-paragraph mini-essays about a half dozen different topics. Once I got started, it rolled out as one long topic-and-a-half entry. I had trouble deciding whether to title this, "Gee, It Really IS 'Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper'", or "Look, It Really Is All About You This Time -- And Your Rights".

This is not a rant. This is a plea.]

Apparently our own President, who I think swore some sort of oath in January as well as doing so four years earlier, referred to the Constitution of the United States of America as, "just a goddamned piece of paper,"¹ and this has a great many people understandably upset. It has me upset. But I fear I am compelled to point out that in a very important respect (though probably not the one he meant) he is, after all, absolutely correct. I am echoing various RL and OL friends when I say this, as well as more established pundits, and historians, whose very business it is to understand this stuff, but it seems a good time for a reminder: the Constitution is only a piece of paper, in that it cannot leap out of its argon-filled display case, don a flashy Spandex costume, and fly with a thunderclap to rescue you when you are being oppressed. All it does is sit there and hope we remember to read it.

Without enforcement, by whomever has the will and the means to enforce it, it is a vapour, empty words. Who cares what rights it guarantees us if none of us will stand up for those rights? What good does its promises do any of us if most of us are willing to let violations of those promises go unremarked and uncorrected?

If the executive will not uphold the Constitution, then the legislature must. If the legislature cannot, then the judiciary must. If the judiciary is spineless or toothless, then it falls to us, the people. [So tempted to say "we, the people" for its rhetorical resonance, but my inner grammarian vetoed it.] What's that old saying about the four boxes with which to defend our freedom, the soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammunition box? There is a stage before the ammunition box -- civil disobedience comes before armed revolt -- so I hope the last box is never needed (despite Thomas Jefferson's oft-quoted comments regarding Shays' Rebellion and the natural fertilizer of the tree of liberty), but whatever the means, we must stand up. The Constitution will not defend us -- it is only a piece of paper. We, the people must defend the Constitution, and in this day we must defend it from an Executive who, despite oaths to preserve, protect, and defend it for our sakes, denigrates it and deems it not merely an obstacle to his goals, but an apparently meaningless obstacle. [Whew. Knew I could get a "We, the people" in there if I waited for it to come around on the guitar.]

Constitution Man is not going to arrive with a fanfare and save the day when your government oppresses you. I'd volunteer to don the cape and do the job [I've always wanted to be a superhero, and Spandex feels neat, even if I'm several pounds too heavy to carry it off as stylishly as I do in my head], but I'm neither strong enough nor well enough armed to take on entire police forces at a time, nor able to be in as many places at once as would be needed, nor gifted with Super Judge powers to be able to figure out when the police were right and when they were wrong with 100% accuracy in the heat of the moment. And it wouldn't take 'em long to figure out my secret identity and then I'd be out of the game and into the pokey. No, it's going to take a lot of us, and we have to be everywhere. Stand up for your rights. Stand up for someone else's. Feed the lawyers. Vote. Write to your representatives. Write to your newspapers. No Spandex actually required, but getting out of your shocked silence and putting a finger under someone's nose when you see another person's rights being violated is essential. So is standing up for yourself when your own rights are being abraded away by the cheese-grater of expedience. Be willing to make a scene, be willing to make trouble, because otherwise the terrorists win those who see the Constitution as a mere obstacle won't even feel it as much as a speed bump as they run over two and a quarter centuries of history and ideals.

When the Constitution whispers from its display case in the National Archives, "Eek! Help! Spike!", each of us must heed the call and answer, "I'll save you!" [betcha' thought I was going to say, "Oh no! Molly!", didn't you?²], and step into harm's way, or at the very least, inconvenience's way, to protect that "goddamned piece of paper" from being consigned to a mere historical footnote.

Don't let my jocular asides make you too comfortable. We're perched between two terribly uncomfortable paths, and I'm not certain whether there's a wire to balance on to walk between them or not. It'd be nice to see Congress grow a spine and stand up for American principles, or the American people manage to use the ballot box to oust those who soil the flag far more while wrapping themselves in it than any protester who has trod upon it has done, and I still hope for those to occur before it is too late. But I fear the other two futures I foresee are each more likely than that: either that these United States will exist in name only and a two-century experiment will quietly fall to be replaced by a police-state caricature of itself or what resembles an immense banana republic with colder weather; or that it will take civil unrest to bring our nation back onto its proper course.

And folks, I don't want to see blood in the streets. I don't want to see my friends rounded up and "disappeared" for using their soapboxes. I don't want to see a corporatist dystopia right out of a 1980s science fiction movie. I don't want to see riots. I don't want to see entire communities disenfranchised. I don't want to see my government indulge in torture and "secret justice" (whoops, too late there). I don't want to see sham elections where the actual wishes of the people are disregarded (am I too late there as well?). I don't want to see my familiar system of government replaced at gunpoint as a last resort by folks who may or may not get it right in their turn and then have to wonder when the counterrevolution is coming. On one side of me I see half of these possibilities; on the other side the rest. Can we still find that middle path, the tightrope between these two pits, and stop the slide toward totalitarian dystopia without having to replace it with bloody chaos? Or have the respectable, the moderates among us, "not wanting to make waves," left it too late?

[I don't need to live in such "interesting times"; I already have interesting friends to keep me entertained. I'd like to keep my environment teargas-free and oppression-free, if possible.]

We have already squandered our status as the city on a hill, the beacon of hope and inspiration to the rest of the world in the name of democratic ideals. Can we at least manage to preserve our own safety and identity at home, even if we are no longer a shining example abroad?

The goddamned piece of paper isn't going to do it for us. It is we, the people, who must do the job for it.

Speaking of those four boxes ... The first thing we have to do is repair one of them: the ballot box is crumbling. I'd much rather use the ballot box than the ammo box (and that'll be true even if I do get around to learning to shoot), but right now we don't have ballots we can trust. And instead of taking steps to improve this, various agencies in various places are instead doing the opposite -- giving their citizens weaker, less-trustworthy voting systems or passing laws to prevent them from complaining within the system (i.e. presenting challenges and lawsuits) about the flaws. This is shortsighted, because when only two boxes are left, the soapbox and the ammunition box, folks having to resort to opening the ammo box becomes a lot more likely. We need that second box -- the ballot box -- back, and we need it badly.

Am I calling for armed revolution? No, but I am predicting it. If you take away the people's power to act within the system, all that remains for them is outside-the-system complaints (protests), insurrection, or surrender to despair. (That last one doesn't sound like a recipe for a productive economy or innovation to stay on top in a global market, does it?) Folks here can be kind of stubborn, and when being loud only proves that nobody with power is listening, some are going to take the obvious next step. And tragically, they may even be right when they do. PLEASE, let's not go there. I beseech the powers in our government to restore the ballot box. It may look risky to your party in the short term, but the long term risks of subverting the vote are disasterous to us all.

But if I am loath to encourage revolution, I confess that I am somewhat tempted to issue that call for civil disobedience, for if we cannot trust the results of recent elections (not everywhere, but some are several notches beyond "fishy"³), can we morally be held to the laws passed as a result of those elections? The notion that we must obey laws with which we disagree because we have a social contract to abide by the decisions of the government we elected, depends on that government being properly elected. Where there have been shenanigans with the voting machinery, is there still any social contract? Perhaps (and I say "perhaps" because I have not fully thought through all the ramifications), perhaps citizens in those places ought to simply refuse to recognize any laws passed since (or as ballot initiatives during) the disputed elections, until a proper recount (or re-vote) can be done to legitimize them? Would that put any pressure on those who keep trying to turn the ballot boxes into kindling?

When we can (reasonably) trust our elections, we can be held to their results. Those who seek to cement their hold on power by weakening the tools by which they might otherwise be voted out, only weaken the authority of their power. At some point the only authority they'll have left will come from the barrels of police officers' guns, and I'm pretty sure the police would feel a lot safer knowing that it was respect for the law, not merely fear of their guns, that gave them authority. When the only authority is from threat of violence or incarceration, well that's tyranny folks, whether those who wield it make pretty speeches about "democracy" and "freedom" on the fourth of July or not. After all, without practice to go with the sounds, those are "just goddamned words."

Give us back the ballot box so that we can keep the ammunition box closed.

I don't want to get arrested, and I don't want to get shot, and I don't want to live in a police state or a corporatist nightmare. I'm begging all of you to help us avoid all of those.

But if I have to choose between a police state and a revolt, I cherish the ideals of our founders too dearly to choose the former. I claim the label 'Patriot'; please help me to avoid having to earn that label by paying with my liberty or my blood.

[1]Doug Thompson, 2005-12-09:

[2]Obscure reference to a rather cute old video game. If you don't get this one, really, don't worry about it.

[3]Y'all already read twistedchick, I hope. I've collected a few friends who often post important news/politics links (though most include a lot more of the usual personal LJ chitchat than twistedchick does) into a filter: http://www.livejournal.com/users/dglenn/friends/newsish where this sort of information tends to show up. (My long-standing thanks to my news-posting friends, by the way.)

Additional thanks to the folks who offered feedback on the first draft of this essay.