It All Depends On How You Look At It

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One of the things that bugs me the most about the people yammering for us to get the country back in line with the Founding Fathers' original intent for the Constitution is this: their lack of perspective. They seem to believe that there was a brief, Golden Age in our American past wherein the Constitution was implemented 100% perfectly according to the Founders' intent, and that there also is NO question as to what the Founders' intent was. [The fact that their interpretation of the Founders' intent fits the failed Articles of Confederation more closely than the Constitution is a topic for another post.--Ed.]

I do not condemn them for wishing for "the good old days." All humans seem to have the tendency to think of the past as being a more idyllic, happier, easier time than the present day. [Though in my own defense, I will say that my "good old days" have to do with things that have happened in my own lifetime and thus are formed not just out of my own desires or even my own memories, but are measurable against objective records and facts as corroborated by other living people's memories.--Ed]

I do condemn them for their vision of a "good old days" that can be proven never to have existed except in their own minds. I also condemn them for asking the wrong question to begin with and misusing the principles of logic in answering same. They hold that the Constitution according to the Founders' original intent had (and has) one and only one clear, specific, unambiguous meaning . . . and they point to assorted writings of the Founders to justify their saying so. They conclude that nowadays, the Founders' true original intent has been not just ignored, but positively stomped on . . . mostly by progressives and other evil liberals. They are unshakably rigid in these beliefs.

The problem is, they are not asking the correct question. It's not the case that the Founders had a single, clear, unambiguous original intent, which we sinners have abandoned. The question is: What actually was the Founders' intent in the first place? The Founders' original intent could well have been to create a framework for the government that was strong enough to stand (unlike the already-proven worthless Articles of Confederation), yet flexible enough to let people of the future deal with the problems of the future, problems that not even the Founders could predict. That is, the Founders' original intent could well have been to create a strong yet flexible framework for government, not dictate some unchangeable, perfect, set-in-stone proclamation.

Consider what objective evidence and untwisted logic reveal. First, the mere existence of the copious Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, and other articles, essays, correspondence, and publications by the Founders proves that the Founders were NOT of one rigid and united mind-set about the Constitution's meaning. In all these writings they frequently, often vehemently, disagreed with one another about what the Constitution meant and would do once ratified. The sheer physical quantity of the documents establishes that, even without reading all the competing claims those documents actually make.

Second, these "originalists" cherry-pick from all these documents to support their point of view. The opinions of every one of the men considered the Founding Fathers is given equal weight [as long as they agree with it, that is--Ed.]. James Madison, however, has long been recognized as the primary author of the actual Constitution. One would think that he'd have a better idea of what he meant when he wrote any particular phrase or clause than would anyone else. His words explaining what he wrote thus should be given more weight than the words of someone who, even though considered a Founder, did not have a large or even direct role in the Constitution's authorship. Yet Madison is ignored or even actively condemned by these same people when they don't like what he says he meant.

[I have the same problem with the way a lot of people who claim to be Christians interpret the Bible. Excuse me, but not only should the New Testament be given precedence over the Old, Jesus' own words should matter more than anyone else's in either the Old OR New Testament. "Whatsoever you do unto the least of My brethren, you do unto Me" (Matthew 25:40) is the essence of God's New Covenant with humanity, and thus should guide our behavior a lot more than the fire and brimstone, Us against Them, tales of a vengeful Old Testament God.--Ed]

Third, the Founders were no dummies, and they of all people knew the only constant throughout history has been change. Heck, the enormous changes they'd seen just during their own lifetimes at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution illustrate that. Their world was moving from a rural, agrarian social structure to an urban, industrialized one. Enormous improvements in the standard of living for an emerging middle economic class had been seen in just the length of one average lifetime--which was shorter in those days than it is now, remember. While the concept of government by the consent of the governed was not new [don't forget the Magna Carta, dating back to the early 13th century--Ed.], the definition of which "people" were included was broadening, dramatically, as more and more people became economically better-off than their forebears had been. [It's most amusing that many of these "originalists" wouldn't have been considered qualified even to vote, let alone to take a turn at governing, by the standards of the 13th-16th (rich, white, male, titled nobility), 17th (rich, white, male owners of large pieces of real property) and 18th (white, male, property owners)--and 19th (black and other minority males), and even 20th (women)--centuries . . . even the more enlightened, dare I say "revolutionary," standards expressed by some of the Founders.--Ed.]

Individuals no longer had to spend every waking moment providing the bare necessities of food, shelter, and clothing for their families. They had the money, and thus the power, to begin to accumulate goods. They had the time to pay attention to "the larger issues of the day." They could take more control of their own lives than could have any generation before them. [People like Abigail Adams (our first feminist) and the abolitionists just pushed the concept to its logical extremes. But someone has to be on the "far left," as it were, or else what is truly the "center" will appear to be the "far left" to those on the "far right." Again, a topic for detailed exploration on another day.--Ed.]

Fourth, the Founders knew full well that no one could predict the future. They knew that problems would arise; they had no way to anticipate exactly what those problems would be. That's why they were willing to scrap the Articles of Confederation when that framework for government proved impotent. If they could have predicted the future, they'd never have made the mistake of writing the Articles of Confederation--instead of the Constitution--in the first place. They'd have started with the Constitution to begin with. History happens; reality "is." The Founders' miserable experiences under the terms of the weak, states'-rights-oriented Articles of Confederation demonstrated for them that they needed to create something with more teeth. They weren't married to some rigid and unchanging concept of what the right formula for the government would be. Under the terms of the Articles of Confederation, they could not fix the problems of weak government created by those same Articles of Confederation, so they started over with the Constitution. I daresay their experiences with the Articles suggested to them that they needed to build not only teeth, but some measure of flexibility, into the Constitution. But one never hears any of these "originalists" talking about the Articles of Confederation and the actual history that happened while it was in effect . . . most likely because they recognize (at some level) that doing so would demolish their entire argument about the Constitution's meaning and scope.

Fifth, as far as I know, at least, none of the Founders ever claimed to be perfect. And isn't it axiomatic that imperfect beings cannot create perfection? The Founders clearly knew this. Remember, the Preamble to the Constitution says "to create a more perfect Union" and not "to create a perfect Union."

The logic is inescapable. The problem is, none of the people decrying our alleged lack of adherence to the Founders' presumed "original intent" care a whit about logic, though they'd like us to think they do. If they cared about logic, they'd not be so het up about the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York City. They'd recognize that the First Amendment's protections for religious freedom and the Constitution's overall respect for the concept of private property trump any raw emotional reactions of individuals. They'd also be equally upset that there are many fundamentalist Christian churches close to the Alfred P. Murrah building site and memorial in Oklahoma City, but we've heard nary a peep from any of them about that. They'd also recognize that just as a putative Christian killed Christians in Oklahoma City, so did Muslims kill Muslims when the Twin Towers were attacked. There were two mosques at the World Trade Center, one in each of the towers, remember.

I do hate to sound like a broken record, but this is the same reason I get mad when people claim Ronald Reagan was the greatest president the USA has ever had "because he ended the Cold War." That's not the right question. The right question is whether ending the Cold War was such a good idea in the first place. Admire the Soviet Union or despise it, you cannot deny that the USSR kept the lid on its allied Muslim states, and when it had problems, it was the USSR's money and precious manpower that were put in harm's way, not ours. Thus, ending the Cold War was not a bad idea just from the standpoint of what it did in ballooning our own budget deficits. It was a bad idea in terms of what it loosed on the rest of the world in the decades subsequent.

I have the same reaction to people who won't accept blood transfusions or other modern medical procedures because "God will provide." Maybe the doctors and the modern technology ARE how God has provided. Consider this little morality tale: one March, a frail old man found himself trapped atop the roof of his house during extreme springtime floods. A neighbor came by in his rowboat and offered the old man a lift to the rescue shelter on higher ground, but the old man declined, saying "God will provide." Shortly thereafter, Coast Guard personnel came by in a motor boat and offered their assistance. Again, the old man declined. "God will provide." Still later, a National Guard helicopter crew flew by and prepared to lift the old man to safety, but again, he said no. "God will provide," he said, serenely.

Well, the old man drowned that night. After his orientation tour of Heaven he raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "I had faith. I was sure that God would provide, and I said that, repeatedly--so why am I here?" St. Peter answered, somewhat sadly, "God provided you a rowboat, a motor boat, and even a helicopter. What were you waiting for, the Titanic?"

If you don't ask the correct question, you'll never get the correct answer, even when it's under your nose or next to your flooded house.

That's a Fifteen-Yard Penalty for Unnecessary Bias

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I renew my objections to the biased content of the History Channel's "America: The Story of Us" project, sponsored by the Bank of America, and indeed, make my objections even more strenuously than I have before. I admit that I have not watched every single second of every single segment that has aired so far, but I've watched more than enough to realize that the problems I had with what I'd seen as of a couple of weeks ago have not only not gone away, but have gotten worse.

Objection the first: the B of A ads have been deliberately designed to be very difficult for a casual viewer to tell from the content of the actual program. Historical narrative (timed to coordinate with the period being discussed at that moment in the program itself) intercut with comments by various "experts" extolling the B of A . . . someone who didn't know much about American history or who wasn't paying really close attention would be left with the impression that the B of A has actually been THE central player in all of US History. One almost expects to see painted portraits of B of A executives at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional Convention, the Gettysburg Address, and so on.

Give me a break!

Objection the second: the program itself is designed to exalt the role of business and banking in US history at the expense of actual fact. For an example from what aired last night, one need consider only the segments "explaining" the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and the lead-up to America's participation in World War II.

(1) More time was given to explaining how the dust storms of 30s affected urban centers such as New York City and Washington, D.C., than was given to explaining how the farming practices of rural America contributed to their creation, and how the rural American economy had been in shambles for years before the technical start of the Great Depression, namely the stock market crash of October, 1929.

(2) I never heard FDR mentioned by name regarding the bank holiday called after he was inaugurated in 1933, to stop the runs on all American banks that threatened to plunge the country into a crisis so deep there would be no digging out from under, ever. One sentence--ONE SENTENCE--was devoted to the fact that economic deregulation had produced excessively risky economic speculation which led to the crisis in the first place . . . while several verbal paragraphs were devoted to the admittedly anonymous single investor who entered a bank in 1933 and demanded ALL his deposited funds back, which triggered the nationwide run on all banks. The result? An impression that this one anonymous individual with his one self-preservative act was responsible for the downfall of our entire economic system, and not the decade-plus of irresponsible behavior by the baking industry that was the hallmark of the Roaring Twenties.

(3) The assertion that FDR's [again, he was never mentioned by name, which makes me wonder whether this was done to avoid a more direct protest against the program's contents by those who know what FDR did for this country--Ed.] public works programs didn't end the Depression; it was our being dragged into World War II that ended the Depression. The writers and producers of this biased interpretation omitted or ignored several salient facts.

--The Republicans, then as now, objected to spending directly to help the American people, and never gave FDR sufficient funding even for his programs that were put into law and effect.

--FDR himself erred in early 1937 when he listened to some of his more conservative economic advisers and pulled back on even the relatively paltry amount of money he had been given to use for his "great economic experiment." This had the effect of shutting down a proto-recovery that had, in fact, begun by 1936, once his public works programs had been in effect long enough to have had real effect on the overall economy.

--The assertion that it was WWII and not FDR's programs that ended the Depression is totally specious. What was it about the war that ended the Depression? Here's a clue: GOVERNMENT SPENDING. It's just that what the money was being spent on had changed from domestic programs designed to help people survive, to armaments production and the entire panoply of what has become the modern military-industrial complex. The source of the spending didn't change. The purpose of the spending did. The amount of the spending increased, dramatically. Had FDR been able to spend on domestic initiatives what he was given to spend on the war effort, the Great Depression would never have been so deep nor long-lasting is it actually proved to be.

(4) The program's continued emphasis on recounting individual anecdotes and what amounts to winning info for the trivia-mad [of which I confess to being one--Ed.] as opposed to focusing on the greater significance of many of the events it describes. Indeed, some of the anecdotes chosen seem to contradict whatever larger point they are cited to "support." A traditional and valid sub-narrative of the Great Depression story is how people, desperate for work, gladly took on any jobs they could find no matter the working conditions, just to be able to bring home even the most paltry pay. The building of Hoover Dam and the sculpting of Mount Rushmore are two of the most commonly cited illustrations, and "America: the Story of Us" does not surprise by choosing them.

However, its telling of the story of Hoover Dam has as its upshot that the money the men earned went to a nearby little, dusty, gambling town of Las Vegas. So the great work of constructing Hoover Dam ahead of schedule and under budget has by implication been reduced to the spark that ignited the boom of decadence in the desert. Talk about your damnation with faint praise!

The story of Mount Rushmore's creation likewise has been trivialized by what the program's writers and producers chose to emphasize. They didn't explain that there was no incentive to implement real safety measures at the site because there were far more men willing to do the work than there were openings available, even allowing for the number of deaths and disfigurements that made new openings available on a regular basis. No, the program implicitly pooh-poohed the dangers by telling the story of one worker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a nearby lightning storm hit some power lines, thus ultimately igniting almost 100 dynamite charges 30 minutes early . . . only to suffer naught but a broken ear drum and the loss of his shoes, which had literally been blown off his feet.

One is left with the impression that the work wasn't so much dangerous as quirkily amusing. Truth would have been better served had the actual death and disfigurement totals been cited . . . but oh, yeah! Numbers and statistics are so BORING! We can't have that, now, can we? Well, numbers and statistics may be boring, but they are facts. And it's facts, not anecdotes, which lead to truth.

This entire program is insidious. It's dangerous. It's not the history of America; it's a paean to a right-wing, pro-business interpretation of American history which omits so many salient facts that it cannot be deemed substantively accurate. I cannot protest it strongly enough. It's another example of why certain things, like history programs, should never be put in the position of having to make a profit in order to justify their creation.

Lest any of you think that I protest because of my own biases, let me remind you: my sole bias is for the truth. The truth based on facts. I was not a fan of FDR who thus interprets his response to the Great Depression based on any predisposition favorable to him. I was someone who learned about the Great Depression by studying what happened, and gained an admiration for FDR as a result of that study. Developing an opinion based on fact is not the same as shoe-horning selected facts to fit one's predispositions. I do the former. That's why I'm at heart a historian. "America: The Story of Us" does the latter. That's why it's a piece of pro-business propaganda.

So my love-hate relationship with the History Channel continues. I love that more Americans are being exposed to history, in often interesting and frequently innovative ways designed to pique interest. I hate that this is coming at the behest of corporate sponsors who have their hands in production from Day One, and which call the shots about how that which is being presented will be interpreted. I hope that even such biased efforts will spur viewers to do some investigating of their own--and thinking of their own--about what they discover. I fear that that won't happen. I am left with this question: is exposure to some, albeit biased, history better than no exposure to history at all? 'Tis a puzzlement.

I'd Take It With Several Grains of Salt, But I'm Supposed To Be On A Low Sodium Diet

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I have been watching parts of the History Channel's current extravaganza explaining American history, "America: The Story of Us." I am not impressed with what I have seen so far. Rather than being a real recounting of American history, what I've seen has been a collection of anecdotes, designed at once to attract the more salacious of the viewers' tastes and to promote the pro free-market, pro laissez-faire agenda of its corporate sponsor, the Bank of America.

No attempt has been made, that I've seen anyway, to provide a larger context for the events described beyond the notion that Americans were and are always moving forward, grasping and grappling with problems, all in the name of economic "freedom." The Lewis and Clark expedition has been reduced to a search for new sources of beaver pelts, the most luxurious and profitable furs of that long-gone trade. The tragedy of the Donner party has been reduced to a bad episode of "Unsolved Mysteries," emphasizing the bodies which were never found and the fact that one of the survivors was found next to a cauldron of human blood.

Frankly, recent PBS examinations of both subjects were about a million times better, each.

Nor am I impressed with another basic presumption of the History Channel's series, which is that Americans have always been reaching out for new problems to conquer, and our history moves from success to success, the heroic tale of a unique and heroic people. I'm not denigrating American history--I LOVE American history. But such a non-nuanced telling not only makes the American story two-dimensional, it cheapens it. The truth is more complex, and even more amazing. Just as many--if not more--Americans were trying to get away from oppression (real and perceived), boredom, or their own fiscal and familial woes as were moving forward with a dream of a new ideal in mind. They were running away, not consciously and deliberately moving toward anything. Important aspects of America's story are accidental, not part of some unseen, grand, even God-given, design.

Perhaps worst of all, the sponsor's ads have been deliberately designed to make it difficult to tell the ads from the body of the program. I'm sure Bank of America will claim it was just tailoring the ad content to reflect the importance of the program. Given the usual excesses of unchecked commerce, however, I doubt that. The ads really were designed to make viewers who aren't paying close attention think that B of A is part and parcel of the entire panoply of American history. [Here's where, in conversation, I'd insert one of the best bits from the movie My Favorite Year: "Captain from Tortuga? Captain from crap!"--Ed.]

So watch the series, or even buy the DVDs so that you can watch it again, and again, and again. But watch with a skeptical eye and several grains of salt. I'll have to pass on the salt, however, as part of my new regimen is keeping my sodium intake to under 2 grams per day.