CONSTITUTIONAL CONVERSATIONS
Illud Consummare!
by
M. E. Boyd, Esq., “Miss Constitution”
Miss Constitution was catching the news the other night and a young man about twenty was being interviewed regarding the Memorial Day holiday. “Do you know why we celebrate Memorial Day?” was asked politely. “Not really.” “For those that gave the last full measure of devotion to their country.” Pause and thought. “I just took a gender-studies class and I say F-America.” Mmmmm. Another went on about Imperialism and Colonialism and announced that there is nothing to be proud of regarding America. To be kind, perhaps this person got America and Great Britain confused. To be even kinder, Miss Constitution thinks about 35% of adult Americans think this way and about 15% of American adults actively hope Marxism replaces our Constitutional Republic. No wonder kids are picking it up, as well. One American young man on an education tour, you will recall, took a poster off a wall in his Marxist North Korea hotel and was tortured to death. He was delivered back to his parents just before he died but with no functioning brain. A couple of weeks ago a teen-aged girl was recorded screaming at her mother that she hated her and that her mother’s Catholicism was hurting the world and that she could never admire or respect her mother again. I’m sure her mother handled the incident with understanding and tried to make sure the child she loves does not have issues, later on, arising from this diatribe. Miss Constitution does not think it takes much imagination to know what is being taught to our young people at ever earlier ages, but it represents elements of Marxism so dangerous to a child.
However sad this state of affairs is it is real and it is pervasive. The disrespect for our culture begs the question, why? No amount of “I’m sorry” could save that young man in North Korea. He cried for mercy in his public trial. No amount of “I’m sorry” can take back a child saying “I hate you” to a mother who has given that child life and is trying her best to instill in her a fine moral core. In her last two columns, Warping the American Mind – Parts I and II, Miss Constitution tried to explain that perhaps part of what is going on is that we thought we had won WWII when we defeated Germany and Japan but we actually didn’t. WWII was indirectly won by Marxism/Communism, both in the Soviet Union and in China. The allies, led by the United States, could have contained the Soviet Union but FDR chose not to. China did not have to become a Communist nation but America allowed it to happen. The explanation for this goes back, perhaps, to the romanticism ascribed to the Russian Revolution of 1917 that caught the imagination of many in Britain, America, and France as a kind of cause celebre. Intellectuals, writers, poets, saw in this peasant revolt a new way to structure society for the benefit of the worker, the “little guy”, the anti-capitalist, the anti-Christ. Many Americans went to live in Russia but some could not return once the disillusionment set it. We hear the same language today wrapped in other ideological issues. For some reason Miss Constitution has yet to discover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt got caught up in it himself. As many as 50% of our people and some of our leaders are caught up in it today. We have to understand the allure and we need to counter the propaganda that is being fed to our people. Communism’s unlikely victory has put our culture and our Constitutional system on the defensive. This defensiveness opens the door to more than just attacks from Communist regimes, it opens the door to new ideological life for Islamic Jihadists and others determined to destroy the West and America in particular. So, what is the allure?
1. Novelty. The simple notion of the new and a misunderstanding of the old. The American system with its unique four bundles of law worked in America because of our experience and is not readily transferable elsewhere. The ingredients in the recipe of our system include the tenets of Protestantism and the values represented in the Protestant ethic ingrained over a long period of time and then merged with the American version of capitalism as articulated by Adam Smith. The concoction had to marinate in the people over time who then accepted constraints with Liberties in the 1787 Constitution. In 1849, Karl Marx came up with an entirely different recipe and our system was seen as the “old” versus the “new.” Rather than slowly ingrained, Marxism/Communism is always forced on whole peoples with often disastrous and deadly results. This may be because it grew out of turmoil and unrest in Europe and elsewhere. It is altogether atheistic – a denial of God.
2. Subjectivity. Communism in all its forms (there are countless variations usually ushered in when a purge sweeps away a past version) rejects the objective, the enduring, and the universal. Human beings are allowed to see all situations subjectively and, of course, do so at their convenience around sex, food, and money. Human beings love being given permission to “make it up” and not have to obey or recognize a higher duty to which they owe an allegiance. When James Madison says that “men are no angels” he meant it. Communism gives license to the non-angelic except where the perpetuity of those in power comes into play. At that moment, the demand for unquestioned loyalty is punctuated by execution, labor camps, secret police, torture, or whatever it takes to suppress questioning the current tyrant in power. Our system prioritizes Moral Law or the notion of right and wrong. We know what is right and what is wrong through our faith in the core beliefs of Judaism and Christianity. It is a faith in the ageless and the enduring and is a constraint to“making it up” to suit a personal situation regarding sex, food, and money. We honor and obey a higher power. The young woman at the beginning of this column owes a duty to honor and obey her mother. As an adult, she owes an additional duty to God and her country. It all starts, however, with the objective – faith first, then Liberty.
3. Simplicity. One does not need to be a critical thinker in a Communist country. One does not need to be a great novelist or a great poet or stretch the bounds of the intellect in a dictatorship of the proletariat. One needs only to be grateful for the state’s housing, medical care, food, and paternalism and go along with the program. If one is allowed one child one has one child. The state trains that child and owns that child’s mind. Americans might be surprised at how recent it is that great works of literature are now available in the former Soviet Union. If one is intellectually lazy, however, Communism is a good fit. It offers a type of equity (results are the same) over the American notion of merit. Merit singles individual people out. There is no such thing as equality in our system except equality of process, and certainly no such thing as equity. When needing an excellent surgeon, equity would be the last thing one would consider. The urge for equity guarantees mediocrity. There can be no other result.
Miss Constitution knows that these three aspects of Communism may not be the only allure. Americans tend to think others are like us and FDR may have thought Joseph Stalin would “come around” once he got a chance to see how America operated up close and what capitalism can produce. This is a common but fatal flaw in many American’s thinking. We are making this mistake with China right now in this regard and we continue to make the same mistake with Iran and other cultures who wish to destroy us. They are not like us. They don’t want to be. Our protection is partly in an educated public and partly in a no-nonsense military. While citizen thoughts are free and wide-ranging, our military thoughts must be coolly centered on victory, on military power, on exercising that power within the ethics of warfare but without the slightest hesitation to win and to win decisively. To weaken warrior training is to assure defeat. This is not an arena for a notion that breeds mediocrity, this is an arena for excellence, for merit. It is life or death for our nation.
Miss Constitution, in as nice a way as she can, proposes we repair earlier notions and finally go ahead and secure the victory we should have had in WWII. She proposes Illud Consummare! – “finish it”, finish it now, and never forget Memorial Day and those who will do the work to get the job done.
