by Richard L. Franklin
4/30/08
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
Thomas Jefferson, who was a true son of the Enlightenment, made sure these sacred truths were given a prominent spot in the great Declaration. He placed them first among human rights because they are axiomatic for the building of a true democracy.
As you know, an axiom is a self-evident truth that requires no proof or evidence to be accepted as true. Axioms are truths we can embrace without reflection or reasoning. If you had geometry in high school, you will recall having first learned a number of axioms that were givens. You then learned how to prove a variety of assertions that could always be traced back to the axioms.
The Enlightenment held that certain assertions are sacred, axiomatic, and meant to be permanently built into the foundation of any true democracy. Jefferson did something stunning when he announced a great democratic trinity to the whole world. He told the world in a few simple words that there were certain self evident truths and that, 'among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Among all the words ever written or spoken, I admire and cherish those words above all the words ever spoken.
I've written more than once on the right to life and why a democratic state has no moral or democratic right kill its own citizens. When asked to state my reasons for my vehement objection to capital punishment, I usually offer as a basic reason for my hatred of capital punishment the fact that it is 'undemocratic' in the deepest sense of that term.
Such killings by the state grossly violate a sacred, treasured, self-evident principle of any true democracy. Alas, this response invariably triggers totally blank looks from even bright, well educated people. They see no philosophical problems with authorizing the state to kill its own citizens. I've always found it passing strange that these people have often seen or heard the initial words of the great declaration, but those words do not seem to have any deep meaning for them.
I also have often written about the third member of the trinity, the pursuit of happiness, and the prerequisites for every person to be able to pursue self-growth and relish the happiness that is born of that growth. Such elements as free universal healthcare and free universal education are foundational for the pursuit and embrace of happiness. How can a human being find happiness while wallowing in sickness and ignorance? I see those two features of society as self-evident human rights that must be implemented by a truly democratic society
The second member of the trinity, liberty, was meant to be a condition all citizens could use to achieve self-growth and happiness. It took many generations and considerable struggle, but liberty was theoretically finally given a major boost by the 14th Amendment which sought to include all citizens under an umbrella of freedom. At least it was trumpeted as doing so, but it is clear today that it needed to go further.
A major flaw of the great amendment is it failed to somehow cover homosexuals and lesbians, who have yet to be actually given the same civil rights enjoyed by a majority of Americans. Freedom in America has always been a slow work in progress, and perhaps that was inevitable from day one. The ancient Greeks were clearly prescient in their belief that there was a powerful, perhaps overwhelming tendency of all democracies to degenerate into a tyranny of the majority.
Although it seems to have been forgotten by nearly all Americans, the primary reason for writing and passing a Constitution was to protect the rights of minorities from a tyranny of the majority, so all citizens could freely seek self-growth and happiness without interference from majority groups. The founders had struggled mightily to find a way to deal with the absolute certainty of the ancient Greek philosophers that all democracies inevitably degenerate into a tyranny of the majority, and they somehow deceived themselves into believing they had solved that problem with the American constitution.
The founders, like the ancient Greeks, were initially convinced all democracies would indeed eventually degenerate into a tyranny of the majority. It was inherent in any pure democracy to eventually slide into a tyranny of the majority. Perhaps this was a proclivity deeply rooted in human nature.
After much discussion and debate, the founders eventually came up with an ingenious concept to prevent this from happening. The answer to the problem that they agreed upon was that of a constitutionally based democratic republic. Underline 'constitutional'. A written, agreed to document would be the device that would forever protect minorities from persecutions by majorities.
We grow up being told the founding fathers had designed a brilliant system of government that would forever stabilize and preserve our democracy. But it wasn't brilliant at all. In fact, it was poorly designed, and America would soon become a corporate industrial plutocracy overseeing massive poverty, unmitigated abuse of workers and children during the industrial revolution, thousands of lynchings, exploitation of women, and so forth
The current movement that is spreading from state to state to amend state constitutions so as to ban gays and lesbians from being able to enter into the same civil contracts that heterosexual men and women can freely enter into is a naked violation of a basic part of the sacred trinity --- an absolute, egalitarian right to pursue one's happiness.
Perhaps even worse, these revisions of state constitutions sabotage the very purpose of the constitutions that are now being altered in state after state. Americans apparently do not even know that those same constitutions originally came into existence to protect minorities from persecution by a majority. Most Americans seemingly believe constitutions are there for the benefit of the majority. This ignorance has been a huge impediment to the growth and nurturing of a true democracy.
Constitutional amendments and state laws that ban certain groups from entering into the same civil contracts the majority of Americans can freely enter into are profoundly violative of a member of the great trinity --- the unfettered pursuit of happiness. Gays and lesbians also want to exchange vows and gain the hundreds of advantages granted to married couples under state and federal laws and to be fully integrated into civil society.
So what has happened along the way since Jefferson first enunciated those three great, self-evident truths, and proclaimed them to the world? The tragic truth is that the great trinity has had every one of its three members grossly violated, mangled, or simply disregarded. When I tell folks we do not have a democracy in America that even comes close to the democracy the great Enlightenment thinkers hoped America would grow into, they only look at me blankly and have no idea where I'm coming from.
It's true the slaves were finally freed, and women finally were allowed to vote, but the progress was horrendously slow and bloody. Even during my lifetime there were states in America that had capital punishment laws for those who practiced sodomy, death statutes that clearly were meant to be selectively enforced against only gays. Lynchings were still a popular pastime in the deep South. And raped women were still being victimized a second time in the courts.
With eight years of Bush and a cowardly, obsequious Congress prostrating itself in the face of an ongoing transformation of America into a neofascist state, we have now radically back pedaled even further from the Enlightenment concepts of democratic freedom. Brutally put, today we barely have even a sham democracy.
I offer my apologies for using so many words to say a few simple things about the self evident truths that were once so hopefully proclaimed to the world and which have been repeatedly butchered. I guess I simply wanted to recall for a moment the world's first proclamation by a national state of three self-evident, transcendent, glorious truths, and how tragic it is that the American people have blown it by allowing greedy corporatists, militarists, racists, homophobes, sexists and other anti-democratic Americans to shred the great American dream.
Benjamin Franklin feared the American people would never manage to keep their new republic. Other great Americans have voiced similar fears. Consider the touching words of Abraham Lincoln:
'I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.'
Richard L. Franklin is the author of ‘The Mythology of Self Worth’.
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