Again, from an outsider, I don't see the relevance of what was written by one group of men (all men) and another, 11 years later. They are words without meaning unless supported by the will of our people as part of our bones. We've come a long way, and I can't imagine trading then for what we have in North America now.
The U.S. is more than fine words and the dead letter of the law. Its creativity---i.e. Lincoln 100 years later---and an ethos borne of generations of immigrants embedded in its educational, research, industrial capacity and its courts are what made the United States the envy of the world.
There are the verities, things we hold to be true, but Constitutions and Charters of Rights and Freedoms are living things, what nations profess to believe. Lincoln's magnificent Address reminded America of what the Founding Fathers brokered (there was no more unanimity among interests then than there is now).
My thoughts don't address what the Founding Fathers had in mind. It's just that, as much as I admired Mr. Goldwater for some things and not others, I did not see him at the barricades during the civil rights struggle nearly 100 years after Lincoln's Address to "enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic."
Mr. Goldwater, son of a Jewish father of Polish descent and a Protestant Episcopalian mother, supported Joe McCarthy. Many of his ideas were later adopted by the Republican "New Right." He was a man of decency and character. Outraged at JFK's assassination (he admired him), he cancelled all his public appearances.
Words don't have meaning in an ethos where anything goes.
Last edited by King Brown; 11/30/07 01:50 PM.
