“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In a few months everyone will be writing about the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. I’ll do it now.
The Declaration has much to say to us, but the most important thing is that our system of government need not be permanent. The test is that when it becomes despotic, when it ceases to work on behalf of liberty, the people have the right to “alter or to abolish it.”
We, the People are the government. It’s not the President, the Court, or even the Congress. That’s the revolution in the declaration. It remains an unmet promise.
Until recently, it was the revanchist right that most revered this sentiment. As a right-wing teenager in the early 1970s, I had this section memorized. The Second Amendment was supposed to make this promise real, our guns a physical veto against the tyranny of what exactly?
It turned out to be FDR.
But the unmet promise remains intact on the page. There is no obligation on whoever replaces the current Administration to respect the forms that made its despotism possible. There is no reason not to expand the court, to add states, or to eliminate the Electoral College.
None of the “Republican” obstacles placed in democracy’s way need to stand. The Declaration states that clearly.
An Alternative View
The American Constitution is designed to frustrate change.
That’s why a parliamentary system is the global standard. It evolved in Great Britain. George III was the last King there to hold temporal power. He lost it when he lost America, and his mind., England’s Parliament had no alternative but to take the power to itself. That also evolved, from unelected Lords and rotten boroughs toward a universal franchise. It’s still evolving.
A parliamentary system lets the majority rule. The problem is finding a majority. Electing members by district makes that easier, but it’s less democratic than electing based on the national vote. Those elections tend to empower tiny minorities so it’s no guarantee against abuse. Also, majorities do abuse minorities, and a Bill of Rights is useless unless it’s enforced.
That’s why the Declaration of Independence is open-ended, and open-minded. Those who call themselves “originalists” to frustrate the popular will, who call our system “a republic” as though that ends all argument, are the enemies of democracy, and of the declaration.
The problem is that in the end most of us are like Jefferson. Great evil has been done in our name, both within our country and on the world stage. We blind ourselves to it to maintain our comforts and rationalize our advantages, just as he did. Wasn’t Sally Hemings the half-sister of his beloved wife? Maybe that made it OK for him. Isn’t the husband a King over his family? Then why not enslave her children, and deny them? Enlightenment can’t reach all the dark places.
Rip away our propriety, and what America really promises is the potential for each of us to have our own Epstein Island, if we’re rich enough and immoral enough to create it. Can any system stop it?
