by Richard L. Franklin
OpEdNews.com
The push toward a constitutional amendment that will ban a given class of civil contracts between people of the same sex has once again triggered a philosophical interest of mine regarding the Constitution and its role in a democracy. During the feistier years of my youth, I would often ask fellow Americans, "What's the difference between a democracy and a constitutional democracy?" With puzzled looks, they usually answered tautologously, saying the one operates under a written constitution while the other does not. This glib answer is not surprising. People often think and talk in circles without knowing they're doing so. What I'm driving at is this: few Americans have any concept of what is the purpose of our written Constitution.
The men who fashioned our American polity as a constitutional democracy only did so after many years of reading, discussing, and writing about the merits of a constitutional democracy versus those of a simple democracy. Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, and many others among the so-called founding fathers abhorred the very thought of a democracy sans written constitution. They believed all such societies would necessarily degenerate into tyrannies because it is a law of human nature that majorities will inevitably oppress minorities, who will often be hated merely because they are different.
It will surprise some to know that a few of the founding fathers, after crafting our Constitution, nonetheless believed the new American democracy would inevitably degenerate one day into just such a tyranny.
It just takes longer if there is a constitution to slow things down.
Benjamin Franklin actually made a speech about the new constitution in which he prophesied that the American democracy would ultimately fail because despotic men would slowly enfeeble the Constitution as they mutated America into a despotism, one that quite possibly would be a cruel plutocracy.
A constitution was eventually sold to the colonies because the wisest of the founding fathers believed it was necessary to protect minorities from being tyrannized by the majority. Put another way -- THE CONSTITUTION EXISTS PRIMARILY FOR THE BENEFIT OF MINORITIES. Mind you, the men who created this protective shield were interested primarily in protecting the small minorities to which they belonged.
The Bill of Rights was tacked on at the last minute for the sole purpose of more explicitly protecting individuals and minorities from a leviathan federal government controlled by a feckless majority.
Now the Christian fundamentalists and neocons want to amend the Constitution in such a way as to deny members of a disliked group the right to enter into an important civil contract, namely that of marriage.
In other words, they want to use the Constitution, which was created to protect the rights of minorities from being abridged by the majority, to expressly amend it so as to deny a basic civil right to a minority.
I cannot imagine a greater perversion of the Constitution and its core meaning.
Richard L. Franklin usereason@earthlink.net Born 1933, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Educated at the University of Minnesota. Taught rational thinking in the U of M Humanities Program for several years. Did counseling, teaching, and writing at the Rational Life Center, Minneapolis, for six years. Wrote Overcoming the Myth of Self- Worth, a manual on applying rational thinking to everyday life. Published Franklin's Focus for 10 years, a printed newsletter that specialized in political satire and muckraking. Currently retired, but still publishing Franklin's Focus as a weekly opinion-plus-muckraking e-rag.
