Loose ends flapping around in my head. In the film on Clarence Thomas I mention below in the post Feed Your Head Thomas explains that he started studying up on the founding documents of America to answer the question "Why do we have the government we have? Why not a parliamentary system" and so on. He and a couple of helpers set about learning all they could about the founding era and the thinking that went into the Constitution. It made him the Constitutional originalist he is today, even a "bloodthirsty originalist" as he said someone called him.
The loose ends flapping up a storm in my skull include the thought how sad it is that he'd been through the university system and had a law practice before he knew much about the founding documents of America. It's saddenibng to think there are probably many politicians who have intoned the oath to defend the Constitution who know very little about it. I don't know much either, just have a general idea of what it stands for. People applying for American citizenship probably know more about these things than we citizens do
I mentioned in the previous post my fantasy of setting up meeting places in towns across the US for the purpose of promoting such knowledge that most of us lack. Sort of like Christian Science Reading Rooms with a lot more to them, of far more value than those places of course. , I'd want it to be possible to get a very thorough education in these things if enough time was spent there. I'd want it to have a library of books on every aspect of the subject, and/or books for sale, also show films from time to time, host lectures, provide summaries of books and lecture topics sort of like Cliff Notes for whoever wants them etc. But I don't want it to be some stuffy classroom or library atmosphere, I want it to be casual and comfortable and a matter of personal interest how much a person gets involved in it. A cafe atmosphere, because I have nice memories of cafe life where the regulars get to know each other and have interesting converstaions, or if they choose just sit and read over their coffee. .Happy daydream.
All that reminded me of an incident in my own cafe life when I was talking to another regular about his experience as a radical in support of black rights and his early life in South Africa. He said he'd been pondering how they should word their Constitution to ensure blacks would be given equal status. I said, How about "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." He wanted to know where that came from. He couldn't believe it had anything to do with America because in his mind America is this evil racist place and he assumed that must be enshrined in the system itself. Of course it's not. The system was designed for dealing with imperfect fallen humanity, holding us to higher standards than any of us naturally live up to. In a sense this is true of all decent governments but it reached its greatest expression in the American founding. It's sad to think we don't know this, that it isn't common knowledge among all Americans.
One of the most destructive effects of the great uproar of the sixties was the abandonment of required courses in American History and Institutions and in Wester Civilization in the Universities. The great uproar itselef was largely fomented by Marxist ideologues. And that's how we got where we are today, our American foundations pretty much destroyed and in their place the makings of the next Communist tyranny with injustice and misery for all.
Cheers.
