We live in an odd house. There is a dictionary stand in the dining room. Bought on a whim at a resale shop. But my office is too jammed with books to accommodate the stand. So we tucked it near the dining room table, to refer to during family Scrabble games, increasingly rare in recent years.
There is also a copy of the Constitution in the kitchen. Any room where three lawyers periodically break bread together should have one handy to resolve arguments — not used much lately either, until Monday. I was alone, drinking coffee, reading the Sun-Times and thinking about July 4. How this year the holiday finds a bitterly divided country, loping toward an election where one party promises to win or seize power. This was the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law doesn’t apply to presidents if they can couch their wrongdoing in the trappings of office.
What is there to celebrate? The rule of law is a candle guttering in a rainstorm.
I sprang up. The little booklet, published by the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, was in a cabinet, nestled beside plates. To read the whole thing now — it only takes a few minutes — is to realize once again how problems of the past echo today.
Article I, Section 2 goes straight to elections: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People ... .”
If you’re wondering where the Constitution allows elections to be ignored if the will of the People isn’t to your liking, that line isn’t there.
The pamphlet also reprints the Declaration of Independence, the reason for Thursday’s holiday, marking this “Action of the Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776.” I read it aloud, beginning to end, my voice echoing off the granite counters.
The self-evident truths begin, “all men are created equal.” The word “men” is significant because women wouldn’t get the vote for another 144 years. And enslaved Blacks didn’t count because they weren’t even considered human beings, never mind “men” with rights and dignity.
I mention that not to make you feel bad about America but as a reminder: Our entire history is one gradual widening of whose voice gets to be heard. Freedom is always a work in progress. As is oppression: There are always Americans fluttering their hands, clutching their pearls and crying, “Oh no! Surely not these people too!”
The famous beginning gets all the attention. But the bulk of the Declaration — easily 2/3 of the text — is a direct complaint against King George III, starting with, “He has refused to assent to laws ...” and faulting him for thwarting the popular ballot, “a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.”
The British king is condemned for discouraging immigration, so vital to a growing nation.
“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither ... .”
So when you’re moaning about an “invasion,” remember: this is a nation that, in its birth cry, wailed for more immigrants.
The king is condemned for corrupting the courts.
“He has made judges dependent on his will alone.”
A charge that, alas, is not sunk in the distant past.
“The president is now a king above the law,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her scathing dissent Monday.
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,” the Declaration reads which, according to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, is now A-OK if done through official channels.
The sense of menace in the Declaration is very real, very immediate. “He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny.”
As we mark the Fourth of July, the peril might not be in the form of ships filled with Hessians bearing down on New York City. But the danger is in some ways more extreme, as the enemy is within the gates. Our ancestors struggled for liberty with all their might. Now we can do no less.
Inside the cover is a brief forward by the late Bernie Judge, a former Sun-Times editor, then editor of the Law Bulletin.
“While the United States had to fight to become free and fight since then to stay free, its strength and resilience reside not in guns and steel but in the words contained in this thin book,” my old editor writes. “Keep this text close by. It is a powerful weapon against those who don’t honor freedom.”
If history teaches us one thing, it is those who don’t honor freedom, and fail to always fight to keep it, end up having it taken away.
