Killing the Constitution

by Ben Heine / MWC NEWS

President McKinley stated the United States must “civilize and Christianize” the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson, much-admired president and unabashed white supremacist, architect of ‘Wilsonian idealism’, occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic, seized Vera Cruz, and sent American troops into European battlefields. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America claimed the inalienable right to guide, either subtly or by force, the destiny of sovereign nations. Behind the seductive, morally presumptuous, language of freedom and democracy is the unmistakeable odour of imperial self-interest and disdain for autonomy. Determined to advance her narrow economic interests, the United States has worked to overthrow legitimately elected governments around the world . Most recently, we have the fiasco of an illegal invasion of Iraq.

What, in the American psyche, permits governments to engage in illegal activities, all the while proclaiming noble aspirations? The truth is much more sinister.

One mantle of hypocrisy is religion, that much abused font of enlightenment and enslavement, a tool manipulated for either great good or great evil. In addition, we must ask how religion affects the interpretation and application of the Constitution.

There is no question this administration espouses a “faith based” agenda. Yet what does that mean? Is such a philosophy in keeping with the vision of the Founding Fathers, who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Was the United States founded upon Christian principles and values? Or is the truth rather more complex? What are the ramifications of dogma on current foreign and domestic policy? What about the current administration?

The United States boasts political democracy, if not economic: the Constitution, with its famous “checks and balances”, tacitly acknowledges the potential for good and evil that lies within every human being. 

Inherent here is man’s free will and choice; no one branch of government can exercise undue influence. Such a perspective, in keeping with the Age of Reason, and opposed to earlier ages of religious based superstition, is quite at odds with the Bush administration’s simplistic and disastrous insistence upon the “we are good, they are evil” notion. Although many of the Founding Fathers were deeply Christian, they acknowledged Deism as a more encompassing and tolerant philosophy: choice, again. Thomas Jefferson lamented religious coercion makes half the population “hypocrites”, and the other half “fools” .

Even so, this much-vaunted approach has failings. The Founding Fathers were mostly wealthy, educated, land and slave owners, interested in keeping an economic upper hand. Despite Constitutional balances, actual power and economic control remained in the hands of an elite few, with little or no recourse for the average citizen. However, one must be cautious in ascribing a value judgement to the political dimension: with no history of popular social movements to effect change anywhere in the known world (related to minimal educational standards, economic factors, and lack of broad based communications), the Founding Fathers felt only a select few had the capacity to guide a nation.  James Madison commented that only chosen capable, enlightened statesmen could “discern the true interests of their country”. Even so, he lamented the possibility of corruption and less than altruistic motives; wisdom superseded by greed.

Perhaps the “all men are created equal” indicates self-conscious compensation, given the Revolutionary War struggle against George III.

Unfortunately, the entire history of the United States reflects the above. Government governs for the elite, not the people, despite protestations to the contrary. Only Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and the 1960s produced grassroots social movements that affected social policy. The 1960s protests, in particular, were remarkable for also changing the course of foreign policy – the war in Vietnam. Sadly, these are anomalies, notwithstanding the very definition of democracy.

Rather than a group of elite individuals, today’s government is beholden to vast and ruthless mega-corporations, particularly oil companies, obsessed with exploiting the world’s resources. The United States, as primary custodian of the world’s oil supply, can indirectly control other oil dependent countries.

Americans operate under the presumption of real choice of political systems and elections: note the inability – reluctance? – of Democrats to curb George W. Bush’s increased aggression in Iraq, clearly against the will of the majority of Americans. The balance of power is still wholly under the jurisdiction of the executive branch; presidential vetoes make no difference.

One must ask how Americans were so easily lured into this pointless, devastating, and illegal invasion of Iraq. In the absence of state induced physical coercion, mental and emotional manipulation work well: 9/11 provided an extraordinary opportunity to instil the intellect numbing straightjacket of terror and paranoia. Goya’s plate 43 of Los Caprichos eloquently states “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”.