The Right to Disagree

The building of a mosque, called the Cordoba Project, within two blocks of ground zero juxtaposes two American ideals: the ideal of tolerance for a diverse inclusive population and the equally American ideal of patriotism; the patriotism that says we honor those who have lost their lives as a result of foreign invasion or attack.

Somehow, by objecting to the construction, one is viewed as intolerant of Islam. Turning the argument into religious tolerance eliminates any further discussion. And any argument, any idea, any commentary that disagrees with a Muslim practice is immediately called religious intolerance. Disagreeing with ideas or practices does not equate to intolerance. It is not religious intolerance to oppose placing a large cross on the mountains over which the Japanese Empire flew planes to bomb Pearl Harbor. It is not religious intolerance to criticize members of The Westboro Baptist church who attend the funerals of military personnel proclaiming that America's violation of thier Biblical interpretation is the reason for the death of soldiers. It is not religious intolerance to argue against the lack of prosecution of Catholic priests who have molested the children in their parish. It is not religious intolerance to claim that the Mormon practice of marrying off young girls to old men is objectionable. It is not religious intolerance to arrest Christian zealots who murder doctors as a way of preventing them from performing legal medical procedures. Somehow, questioning anything related to Islam is characterized as religious intolerance. No sect, no religion, no political party should be exempt from criticism, skepticism, or interrogation.

In 1790 George Washington visited the Touro Synagogue, the first synagogue in the United States, rightly located in the colony founded by John Williams. He is the colonist who promoted religious tolerance and the separation of government and religion, unlike its neighbor, Massachusetts, whose laws prohibited the entrance of Quakers into the colony. The members of the Synagogue participated in and contributed to our fight for independence from the British Empire. Washington wrote to the synagogue after his visit saying: “. . . happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

It was a message that embodied everything that the Constitution ultimately reflected. The Framers in 1787 met to create a new Constitution, one that expanded the power of the Federal government from the Articles of Confederation. The final product included the ideas of John Locke and Rousseau and Montesquieu. These three men developed the idea that humans have natural rights that could only be guaranteed through a system of laws that were applied equally to the powerful and the less powerful. They believed that people must be governed in order to pursue their lives based on the natural rights. They further believed that the government can only govern those who agree to be governed. The social contract said that people would agree to abide by the laws established by their government in exchange for the protection of their natural rights.

Certainly, a level of “toleration,” as Washington called it, is required to live in a Republic that so ferociously protects individual liberty. More than tolerate, we should celebrate the powerful ideas demanded by our Constitution. Those who wish to reap the benefits of free enterprise, free speech, and the free exercise of their religious beliefs must commit themselves to the same level of tolerance that they are afforded.

Comedy, comedic sketches, satire, and parody live on the far edge of free speech. Yes, it is often vulgar, disrespectful, even heretical. Drawing the line between one’s individual liberty and another’s must be based on an understanding of America’s founding ideas. The president, the congress, the police force, and the judiciary all pledge to uphold the Constitution. They do not pledge to uphold the tenets of any religious belief.

The Constitution must take precedence not just in the courts of law but also in the way each citizen lives his or her life.

The Cordoba Institute, sponsors of the Cordoba Project, carries the tag line “Improving Muslim-West Relations.” By identifying its mission as religious, it has already framed any discourse in religious terms. Any project that receives objection is automatically religious intolerance. By the way, Cordoba is a city in Spain, the one European nation conquered by the Islamic Empire in the seven hundreds and remained strong until 1492. the Cordoba Caliphate (an Islami system of government based on shariah law) ruled Spain from 929 to 1031. The great mosque of Cordoba stands as one the architectural masterpieces of Islamic occupation.

The fact is that on September 11, 2001, Muslim militants hijacked American planes and managed to kill almost 3000 American civilians in less than three hours.
It is not religious intolerance to suggest that Americans, not just those who suffered directly from the attacks, not just New Yorkers, but all who experienced the misery of that day should be spared a discussion about advancing the interests of Muslims in America.

It is a recognition that we are still unclear about the future of America’s safety from Muslim fanatics. It is a recognition that this country continues to live under the threat of Muslim extremists expressing their beliefs in various parts of the country’s airspace. It is a recognition Muslim fanatics exercise 12th Century practices that feel so real that the comedy network cancelled a sketch on the stupid, completely non-influential comedy show "South Park." The freedom to speak is fundamental to the United States and no one’s life should be in danger for something he said. Don’t force religious systems on the people of America. It’s against everything America is about.

In 2003 I attended the Color Lines Conference held at Harvard University. At the conference on the growth of religion in American neighborhoods, the speaker for Islam stood and said with great force, “A Muslim will never vote for Jew.” I have always regretted that I did not speak more forcefully against such a statement. My feeble excuse is that I was shocked to hear such a statement at an academic gathering organized to affirm Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that we must “one day judge others . . . by the content of their character.” I responded by reminding them that not far from there, at Salem, people were killed based on suspicion that they were not exercising their religion appropriately, I reminded them that even closer than Salem, in Boston, stood the statue of Mary Dyer, the Quaker killed because she would not practice her religion according to the Puritan criteria.

It is not acceptable to accuse people of religious intolerance because they disagree with someone who is a member of a religious sect. That was the whole point of the First Amendment. In America, if we keep the idea of the framers in mind, we are Americans first. We live by the Constitution first and that allows us to practice our faith without fear or prejudice. We also have the right speak according to our belief systems. We are Americans before we are any other organization be it religious or political or economic class.

Tolerance, celebration, and respect for diversity of opinion must flow in all directions. In a democracy, members of religious organizations must respect the rights of those who do not share the same religious belief systems, including the right to disagree.

School Choice, Democracy, Liberty

A recent Burlington Free Press editorial suggested that including independent schools in choice options goes “against the very idea of public education.” But in 1925, the United States Supreme Court held that “the fundamental liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”

The Founders espoused the need for an educated citizenry, but did not imagine a bureaucratic system to serve a nation built on individual liberty.

The Brigham case pointed out that while the Vermont Constitution requires a town to have a school for its youth, it does not specify a formula for funding the school. Creating a publically funded educational system by providing equal funds to each family in Vermont for the education of their children would more fully coincide with American beliefs and the legendary Vermont commitment to independence of thought and action. The current public system increasingly reflects the policies of political parties and labor entities. The very system on which we depend to develop citizens who understand self-governance is not self-governed and does not provide a model for such.

The Free Press concludes that school choice that extends to independent, self-governing schools “works against the interest of Vermonters.” I disagree and offer the following idea posed by Professor Stephen Arons, Legal Studies Professor at UMass Amherst, at a 1999 forum in Vermont on the issue of democracy and school choice.

“Freedom of choice has always been the foundation of strength and unity in a nation whose governments rule by the just consent of the governed. For us, equality and liberty are mutually dependent . . . equality of school choice is essential to the preservation of democratic self-government, not antithetical to it.”

Misguided Constitutional Claims

Virginia’s Sons of Confederate Veterans proclaim that Virginia exercised “her Constitutional Right to secede from the Union” to retain her honor. Such an egregious misunderstanding of the Constitutional history of the country inspires citizens to rally and wave flags and to convince themselves that their anti-government rhetoric can be proven in the Constitution.

It’s important to remember that all nations have constitutions. We are one of the few that lives deliberately within the constructs of ours. An increasing number of claims on the Constitution makes one wonder if we are talking about the same document. Twisting the secession of the South into a noble and Constitutional act renders meaningless any reference to the Constitution. We can’t make the Constitution say what we want it to as a way to elevate our own biases.

So let’s back up and see if Virginia’s Sons are correct. First, as Lincoln reminded his citizenry in his first inaugural address, the Union is older than the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation was ratified in 1781. Its preamble includes the phrase “perpetual union between the states . . . ” The word perpetual shows up in some form or other seven times. The state of Virginia signed this first contract as did the other southern states of Georgia, North and South Carolina. Maryland, a border state, also signed.

Aside from the idea that they aligned themselves into perpetuity, they also signed off on Article VI which says “no two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it will continue.” I include the entire statement in order to demonstrate that the Founders did indeed think about future possibilities of disagreement, and made it clear that the Congress had to approve such an institution.

The idea was restated in the Constitution in Article IV: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

By Lincoln’s election, seven states had already seceded and elected Jefferson Davis as their president. Undeterred, Lincoln went on to remind all the United States citizens that “it is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.”

And he went on to say, “in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’”

After such a bloody war on our own land, it is a shame that so many still don’t know what it was about.

Increasingly, rallies crying out to preserve the Constitution fall flat when their participates are asked to identify specific violations. The protesters speak from a fear that they seem at a loss to fully articulate. Their anti-tax stance seems odd in the face of a such large tax cuts for the middle class this year. Their opposition to President Obama's recent arms treaties seems odd given that their hero, Ronald Reagan, spoke passionately about his dream to eliminate nuclear weapons. Their rage against changes in health insurance seems odd given their opposition to large corporations, their opposition to illegal immigrants receiving benefits, and their opposition to paying for those who don't pay their own way. It's just odd. It doesn't square right.

The changing demographics has instilled fear in large portions of the American population and they look, appropriately, to the Constitution for comfort. The innacuracy is to suggest that somehow our Constitution has been violated. It has not. We are living our Constitutional guarantees: neither race nor gender shall determine our rights to achieve and participate in the American landscape of politics and justice. What does it mean when someone cries, only weeks after the election that she wants her "country back." Back from whom?

A recent quote from the Tea Party Patriots reveals an unfortunate blending of John Locke's commentary on the natural rights and an opposition to the majority in, I guess, the Federalist Papers. The person, whose posting name appears to be jfkbischoff, says that "by 'natural law' the wisdom of the 'crowd' is always superior to that of any individual or 'expert''. The punctuation errors aside, the statement, the idea, is flawed beyond repair. Mixing the natural rights philosophers with those who wrote against majority rule turns both ideas on their heads.

In his Second Treatise on government, John Locke wrote in response to Richard Hooker's essay in defense of the Anglican Church against Protestant and Puritan demands regarding the governance of churches. Hooker's job was to maintain the power of the Anglican Church in opposition to the Presbyterian and Puritan demands.

Locke stated that, in fact, government was required to protect the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. Without government, man's self-interested passions would create discord. He said, "it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and to their friends; and on the other side, the ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others, and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain partiality and violence of men."

The Framers, not to be confused with the Founders (but oh well why distinguish when you have claimed you are a patriot) designed a system of government to counter mob rule. In Federalist Paper #55 Madison (a Framer) wrote that we must "avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."

Further, aside from knowing nothing about the documents from which they allegedly quote, the Patriots also know nothing about the circumstances of the original men and women who declared independence from the British Empire on pain of death. Did I mention "on pain of death"? One is required to understand that the original rebels were not protected by the government in the way that today's so-called patriots are protected. Th original patriots, in fact, had no representation in the British government and its rule from Britain. Soldiers were quartered in the homes of the colonists. Are there soldiers quartered in any American home today? Each state has senators and representatives duly elected by the people of that state. This was definitely not true in 1776. In 1776 the colonists were governed by people whom they did not elect. They couldn't vote.

The government against which these neo-patriots rail, protects their right to speak and to assemble and to protest. This was not true in 1776. What is it that the current patriots risk? It is fine to march in protest to the government: I did it myself against the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. I marched for the Equal Rights Amendment. It's possible that I will march again on some issue.

But I am very clear that I am safe in exercising my right. I am protected by my government; I am not risking anything. My goodness, to equate oneself in 2010 with the men and women who did what they did ON PAIN OF DEATH in 1776 is narcissistic and cavalier. It overstates one's role and understates the role of the originators. C'mon.

The Framers detested mob rule and factions. That's why they wrote the Constitution in the first place.

And, finally, it can be dicey to quote the Framers.

The Framers opposed a standing army, but surely even the neo-patriots support and are grateful for our military.

The Framers did not abolish slavery until 1863. Surely all American oppose slavery.

The Framers did not allow women the vote. Surely, all Americans agree that a woman has a right to vote. Michelle Bachman would not be in Washington, D.C. if we ran the country based on the Constitution written and adopted in 1787.

The Framers did not envision, if we read their papers, a life-time Senator or Representative. Maybe we would all agree that they might have been right about that.

All I'm saying is that the rhetoric today is in no way comparable to the rhetoric of our Founders and Framers. Don't invoke their names and ideas unless you are prepared to elevate the discourse and live up to their high standards.

Racial slurs and bigotry had no place in the world of the men who created America. It had no place in the nation preserved by the Civil War.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, George Washington corresponded with the warden of the Touro Synagogue, the first synagogue in America in Newport, Rhode Island.

Here is what Washington wrote: "The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. . . . For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

Now maybe the neo-patriots believe that they are acting as "good citizens," but they have not lived up to the command that we live without bigotry.

How sad for the children who hear this hateful language from their parents.

About the title and the blog

The title comes from a speech by Thaddeus Stevens in December of 1865. The Civil War was over and Reconstruction had begun. Stevens felt strongly that the government needed to address the attend to "four million slaves" suddenly freed after two hundred years. As he said, "the infernal laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the common laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life." He asserted that if Congress failed to provide them with "protective laws" until they could enter society as fully informed citizens that we would "deserve and receive the execration of history and of all future ages."

Execration means a curse.

For all future ages. That's a powerful idea.

Thaddeus Stevens, a Vermonter, became a Representative for Pennsylvania. He co-authored the Fourteenth Amendent, also known as the Civil Rights Amendment. In fact, as I write this, the Supreme Court is using the Fourteenth Amendment to determine a gun control issue.

This blog is for those who care about "all future ages." It is for people who believe that for all of its messiness and slowness that our system of government has consistently proven to be the most effective system to establish equality and justice. The language we choose to use, the behaviors we choose to exhibit, leave an imprint on our children. Our future ages.

We have clusters of people who want to secede from the Union. We have clusters of people who believe that our government is not to be trusted. We have clusters of people who have lionized a man who flew his plane into a building housing federal employees. We have clusters of people who believe it is appropriate to compare our President to Hitler.

This blog is about "future ages." We have to have a place where the average person who believes in the Republic can comment on the news and issues of the day. By average person, I mean a person who does believe in American principles, who will use the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as reference point, who have some idea of the principles on which Supreme Court rulings have been made, even if they disagree with them, and who is willing to explore an opposing point of view that is presented in such a way as to engage in a discussion.

Having at a least a passing understanding of the Federalist Papers would be a plus.

Please go to another blog if you wish to deride, slander, trash, swear, name-call, or threaten people who do not think as you do.

Please go to another blog if you do not subscribe to the notion that together we can find the balance between individual liberty and the "general welfare" of our people.

Please go to another blog if you are unable to see beyond your party affiliation or platform.

So. OK. Civil Discourse. What a concept. Just to reinforce the above, I want to refer to James Madison and his feelings about factions. He called them mobs. I recommend Federalist #10. We all understand being swept into a political mob. It feels purposeful and righteous. But does it serve the "common welfare"? If it does, explain it. Trust that if your argument is cogent it will be heard. Appealing to fear and bigotry did not build this nation.

So. OK.

Also, I can't find the editing application but I just want to get this on the page!