July 4TH
By Thomas Sowell
RealClearPolotics.com
The Fourth of July may be just a holiday for
fireworks to some people. But it was a momentous day
for the history of this country and the history of
the world.
Not only did July 4, 1776 mark American independence
from England, it marked a radically different kind
of government from the governments that prevailed
around the world at the time -- and the kinds of
governments that had prevailed for thousands of
years before.
The American Revolution was not simply a rebellion
against the King of England, it was a rebellion
against being ruled by kings in general. That is why
the opening salvo of the American Revolution was
called "the shot heard round the world."
Autocratic rulers and their subjects heard that shot
-- and things that had not been questioned for
millennia were now open to challenge. As the
generations went by, more and more autocratic
governments around the world proved unable to meet
that challenge.
Some clever people today ask whether the
United States has really been "exceptional." You
couldn't be more exceptional in the 18th century
than to create your fundamental document -- the
Constitution of the United States -- by opening with
the momentous words, "We the people..."
Those three words were a slap in the face to those
who thought themselves entitled to rule, and who
regarded the people as if they were simply human
livestock, destined to be herded and shepherded by
their betters. Indeed, to this very day, elites who
think that way -- and that includes many among the
intelligentsia, as well as political messiahs --
find the Constitution of the United States a real
pain because it stands in the way of their imposing
their will and their presumptions on the rest of us.
More than a hundred years ago, so-called
"Progressives" began a campaign to undermine the
Constitution's strict limitations on government,
which stood in the way of self-anointed political
crusaders imposing their grand schemes on all the
rest of us. That effort to discredit the
Constitution continues to this day, and the
arguments haven't really changed much in a hundred
years.
The cover story in the July 4th issue of Time
magazine is a classic example of this arrogance. It
asks of the Constitution: "Does it still matter?"
A long and rambling essay by Time magazine's
managing editor, Richard Stengel, manages to create
a toxic blend of the irrelevant and the erroneous.
The irrelevant comes first, pointing out in big
letters that those who wrote the Constitution "did
not know about" all sorts of things in the world
today, including airplanes, television, computers
and DNA.
This may seem like a clever new gambit but, like
many clever new gambits, it is a rehash of arguments
made long ago. Back in 1908, Woodrow Wilson said,
"When the Constitution was framed there were no
railways, there was no telegraph, there was no
telephone,"
In Mr. Stengel's rehash of this argument, he
declares: "People on the right and left constantly
ask what the framers would say about some event that
is happening today."
Maybe that kind of talk goes on where he hangs out.
But most people have enough common sense to know
that a constitution does not exist to micro-manage
particular "events" or express opinions about the
passing scene.
A constitution exists to create a framework for
government -- and the Constitution of the United
States tries to keep the government inside that
framework.
From the irrelevant to the erroneous is a short step
for Mr. Stengel. He says, "If the Constitution was
intended to limit the federal government, it
certainly doesn't say so."
Apparently Mr. Stengel has not read the Tenth
Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people."
Perhaps Richard Stengel should follow the advice of
another Stengel -- Casey Stengel, who said on a
number of occasions, "You could look it up."
Does the Constitution matter? If it doesn't, then
your Freedom doesn't matter.