Happy Independence Day! Like half my friends I started celebrating a day early by watching Hamilton. It’s as good a celebration of America as there is. Want to say something good about America? It produced Lin-Manuel Miranda. He combines serious history, with brilliant music. People notice the rap, but there’s so much more. There are songs that evoke Mozart. There are songs that evoke Gilbert and Sullivan, and of course classic Broadway. It’s all combined seamlessly. It’s the American Magic Flute. High, mid, and low culture are made one, and that combination is high. Every element elevates the whole. You care about the characters, you learn about the history, and your carried away by the music. It’s not possible for me to watch this and not be enraptured.
This was the best video of a play in a theater that I’ve seen. It’s a genre that I don’t often like. Sweeney Todd was my favorite musical, seeing it on TV was a huge disappointment. That which is both grand and intimate on a stage comes across as small and static on TV. Not so with Hamilton. It complements seeing it live. On TV I can see the facial expressions. King George is not just a buffoon but a menacing buffoon. If this be madness then there is evil in it. Watching Hamilton and 1776 should be part of every American child’s education.
An observation of me being me. I usually don’t like colorblind casting in a story about historical people, especially when their race is relevant as it is here, but Hamilton not only makes it work but turns it into a virtue. That’s not what I observed about me. I had no trouble adjusting to Thomas Jefferson being black but had trouble with the small and frail Madison being played by an actor taller and huskier than the one portraying Jefferson. When I saw it on Broadway Madison was played by a short actor. I thought that deliberate.
I read the Declaration of Independence every year near the fourth. This year I threw in the constitution for good measure. I discovered after I lifetime that I missed a clause in the constitution. I thought that equal representation of each state in the Senate was the one clause that could not be amended. I was wrong. On a second reading now I’m not sure I was wrong. This would make a hell of a legal battle based on a semicolon. Here is the clause in question, the last in Article V on the mechanics of amending the constitution.
Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
Does the sunset clause of 1808 refer only the clauses cited in First Article or to everything that follows including equal suffrage in the senate. If it doesn’t, then we can’t change a major structural problem of the country, the disproportional power of small states. The 39.5 million Californians count no more than the 0.6 million in Wyoming. I could be changed but it would take the unanimous acceptance of all the states, as it can only be done with the consent of each states.
You should all read the Declaration to see the country’s noble aspirations and appreciate that we have fallen short. We fell short in the writing of the Declaration; in a line that is horrific to us now, “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” How does that jibe with “All me are created equal?” That doesn’t mean that Americans are hypocritical, it means that we are human, with flaws and blind spots. Madison in the Constitution had the wisdom to say, “a more perfect Union,” not a perfect one. None of us is the person we aspire to be, and we aren’t the nation we aspire to be. The founding fathers lack the understanding we’ve gained in the last 244 years. This leads to two reactions that I both find distasteful. To the originalists, and textualists, the bigotries of the 18th century are enshrined in law. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were the progressives of their day. They believed in progress, and enlightenment. That’s their original intent. When they plead for justice, it’s by the lights of society at the present, not a fixed point. People learn, and our interpretations should allow for that. The fact that they might not have considered Indians, Blacks, and Women as men endowed with unalienable rights, shows their lack of understanding, not their intent. The originalists and traditionalists are looking for reasons to preserve their advantage, even if they are unaware of their motives.
But it is unfair of us to demonize the founding fathers for their flaws. We have the advantage of 244 years of progress that they didn’t have. We have modern privilege. One of my favorite scenes in 1776 is between Franklin and Adams of giving in to the demand of the south, that the anti-slavery clause that Jefferson wrote be stricken.
Adams: If we give in on this issue posterity will never forgive us.
Franklin: That’s probably true but we won’t hear a thing, we’ll be long gone. Besides, what will posterity think we were? Demigods? We’re men no more no less; trying to get a nation started against great odds than a more generous god would have allowed.”
For most of history posterity treated them as demigods. Now we are more discerning. That means we should see them as men, not demons. We’ll be long gone when posterity judges us, but I’d like to think that they would be more generous.
I always go through the list of calumnies committed by the King George and Britain and see which resonate today.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. – Nobody is doing this to the legislatures, but the same thing is done to the people and polling places to suppress the vote. The fight against vote my mail is the same sin.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither …
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. – We can add inspectors general.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: – Doesn’t this sound familiar?
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. –Repeated injury from teargas and use of excessive.
These sins are not America. Trump is not America. America is conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are a nation of immigrants. Immigrants get the job done. With all our flaws people still yearn to come here. People walk from Central America thousands of miles to be greeted by hostile boarder guards and in incipient wall for exactly the same reason that my grandparents came here, for a better life. Not a perfect life, simply better. Those that wear Make America Great Again hats, are against one of the very things that made us great. That unlike the nations of the old world, we are not made a nation by blood and soil, but by our ideals, and should welcome all who share them. Someone willing to risk their lives to get here, is exactly the kind of person I want here.
Wise Madness 