Wednesday, September 17, 2014

It's Constitution Week

Which means nothing.  You were probably unaware and it's very much for the best if you were.  

The week seems to be the doing of the Daughters of The American Revolution,  that old starched-shirt enforcer of WASP supremacy/cultural "purity" who I was surprised to learn still exist in 2014.  The  purpose of this designated week seems to be to promote a decidedly 'originalist' view of the document, the idea that the founders intended to bind all generations to one legitimate philosophy of governance for all time in the name of freedom. (Towards that end are such banalities as "inform people that the Constitution is the basis for America's great heritage and the foundation for our way of life."  and yes that is the singular "way") It failed towards that goal, but it does led to some more in-depth study of our Constitutional freedoms in some classrooms and that I suppose is for the good.  If any students should be so subversive as to realize that the concepts of freedom of speech, religion etc could potentially exist in any legal document one chooses to place them in so there is no need to fetishize this particular one; well, that can't be helped.  

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