Oops. Move an iPad and publish your blog without a word (but the title) written. I'm embarrassed...
Anyway, that's not what I was going to write. What I was going to write is that there's been a discussion over on Authonomy about the recent British General Election. https://www.authonomy.com/forums/topic/20260/
Most people are complaining (because it's a British website run by a British publishing house), others are defending, and it all sounds pretty American - except for parts.
In the discussion, the question of the 'right' to protest came up and there appeared to be confusion about whether protests had to be tame and boring, tromping down the street with signs in the air that's full of chanting. Or if protests can include defacement and demolition of public and private property.
No one came right out and said that destruction should be part and parcel of a protest, but they did admit that it happens and that the organizers of the protest can't do much to stop it. Still, the police should, by inference in what was said, just leave the protestors alone.
Whatever. I'm not going to discuss the rights and wrongs of that here, so I'll leave it.
But this whole conversation brought into it the Amendments that 'allow guns' and that 'allows protest'. Well, I knew the allowing protests wasn't the case. The Founders never wrote a word that explicitly 'allows protest' like we see today with looting and burning and violence. So I looked it up. Just like I used to tell my daughter to do. You want to know something, look it up.
Even though history usually bores the crap out of me, I decided to expand my horizons, a little. So I did what everyone does, I Googled and found a fantastic website for all things American History - Rutgers University, and it's where I found the Federalist papers online (have a book, but online is so much hipper). http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1786-1800/the-federalist-papers/
I started reading - and I'm fascinated.
As for the initial premise, the 'right to protest' isn't really that. It's actually the right to assemble peaceably (with the object of that clause being the 'peaceably' bit). It explicitly says so, right in Amendment I to the Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The key word there is peaceably. Yes, the protesters in Ferguson and Baltimore had the right to assemble, but... Seems the 'peace' part seems to have gotten lost. But that's a different discussion
Then I decided I wanted to know by what logic the Founders developed our Constitution and Bill of Rights and you know what I discovered? It is really fascinating reading!
I'm not much of a history buff. Usually it's a snoozefest so I dabble, at best, and have scattered knowledge mostly based off of historical research someone else has done in writing a book that I've read. In some cases, I have gone farther - World War II is something I've read about in more than a casual way. Mostly, I find history to be boring - dry as dust. But this... Wow!
Did you know that the Founders looked back at history - all the way to Greece - to find ideas they could make and mend into a constitutional republic?
Did you know, based on Federalist 1 written by Alexander Hamilton, that the three men who wrote the Federalist essays (there were 85 in all, written for publication in the New York press because New York and Virginia were key to getting the Constitution ratified) envisioned something like the European Union? They did! It says so - right there, in black and white - and that's where the idea of the militias and right to bear arms comes in:
"...you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject...comprehending its consequences nothing less than the existence of the union, the safety and welfare of the parts..."
In other words: by creating a union of independent states - each with their own government like the European Union has, today - and having the centralized Federal government provide the benefits of a monarchy - the standing army and centralized bureaucracy that would keep things running, we could have the best of both worlds. Now that's a DNA scratch of a fingernail (the cellular bits after someone scratches and there's stuff left behind - it's just a touch, really, on the bigger bits) of the entire series, but if you read on, it's a theme oft repeated.
The states would govern themselves, like little countries. They could maintain militias so that if a bigger badder state wanted to pick a fight, the little state could defend itself. If things got out of hand with Massachusetts or Connecticut beating upon Rhode Island, for instance, then the federal army could be called upon to step in.
That is pretty cool stuff!
It goes on, and it's really remarkable. Hamilton says: "...reserved to the people of this country...to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
In other words: can men govern themselves, or must they be governed - as by a monarchy or conquering army?
The rest of it is equally interesting. Man, these guys were smart!
I won't promise to read every word, but I am definitely going to browse! Federalist 8 is also interesting, but I won't be a spoiler...
Have a great day! Expand your mind - READ!!
Best~
Philippa
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