On the Constitution

September 17, 2013September 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

“To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race” — President Coolidge speaking from the White House, December 12, 1924

“It is axiomatic that our country can not stand still. It would seem to be perfectly plain from recent events that it is determined to go forward. But it wants no pretenses, it wants no vagaries. It is determined to advance in an orderly, sound and common-sense way. It does not propose to abandon the theory of the Declaration that the people have inalienable rights which no majority and no power of government can destroy. It does not propose to abandon the practice of the Constitution that provides for the protection of these rights. It believes that within these limitations, which are imposed not by the fiat of man but by the law of the Creator, self-government is just and wise. It is convinced that it will be impossible for the people to provide their own government unless they continue to own their own property. These are the very foundations of America” — President Coolidge’s Second Annual Message, December 3, 1924

“What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost” — December 12, 1924.

Today, September 17, marks the 226th year since the last meeting of the Convention in Philadelphia and the signing of the Constitution. What a remarkable achievement and prescient blueprint has been handed down to us. Happy Constitution Day!

On How America is Special

September 16, 2013September 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Much has been discussed in recent years about America’s specialness in history, especially with the advent of an administration that seems content to deny what makes us different from the rest of the world. In place of this outright humiliation and shame toward America’s exceptional accomplishments, these latest advocates of nihilism and pessimism would revert us all back to before a New World was known, to when tyrannical government and daily subsistence were the best for which anyone could hope. Such is the “fundamental transformation” Obama has had in mind since he said those words five years ago. It is the same throwback dreamed by Vladimir Putin who wishes we Americans would give up our arrogant adherence to individual rights and government by consent and just follow the dysfunctional frameworks of the rest of the world.

Our exceptionalism is not a claim to genetic superiority. It is not a boast that we are somehow better people of superior knowledge, ability, or social standing than everyone else. It is not even a claim that we are in some way closer to perfection than others.

What so many confuse with schoolyard pride, we understand as foundational principles of equality before God, liberty under law, freedom of the individual, and a limited government by consent. The norm all around the world has, and continues to be, one of oppressive government power by an elite few self-endowed with the right to rule over subjects. In this normal environment, the individual lives at the behest of the State. The inequality, warfare, lawlessness and crippling lack of opportunity all trace from the institutionalized denial that the individual possesses any liberties not granted by their masters, the Government. It is the same whatever era of time, whatever name it wears and wherever it is allowed to take root. Given the power, this normal rule strangles liberty and supplants an individual’s sacred freedoms.

America deliberately departed from that dominant system, enshrining — in the very foundation — protections for those God-given rights to individuals through a written constitution. Further defining, limiting, and curtailing what government could not do insulated those individual liberties from the erosion of time and corruption by human ambitions. It is the best attainable foundation ever built and the strongest basis upon which to construct an exception to the rule governing the rest of the world.

As usual, Coolidge said it best,

“The new country offered not only material opportunities, but possibilities of a spiritual and intellectual emancipation which they ardently wished their friends on the other side to share. Citizenship in the New World meant something that it had not meant in the Old. It was seen that the New World offered something new. There was increasing realization that many burdensome traditions and institutions had somehow been shed. Here at last the individual was lord of himself, master of his own destiny, keeper of his own sovereignty. Here he was free.”

Or again, when he said,

“The fundamental principles on which American institutions rest ought to be clearly understood. Being so understood, they can never lack for defenders. They had been thought out and fought out by the original settlers of the colonies, and whenever they have been in jeopardy they and their successors have not failed to rise and make whatever sacrifice was necessary for their preservation and, from time to time, for their extension. It would be idle to claim that our country has yet reached the goal toward which they plainly lead, but more idle still to deny that the path is open and that the people are continuing to make progress in that direction…”

Coolidge, reflecting on defeat of Spain and the rise of the Dutch and then the English, continues, “Despotism lost. The material power of the sword, of riches, and of arbitrary rule was vanquished. The spiritual power of freedom of conscience, of personal judgment, of personal responsibility, of religious and political liberty was victorious…”

But what about those bigoted, greedy, violent, ignorant whites who came to an already settled land to pollute and despoil it? As usual, recasting history through so biased a prism may serve the current political agenda but it does not serve truth. History is a study of the whole picture not merely selecting deviants. It searches for essentials, timeless truths and fundamental principles. To skip those in order to discredit them is neither honest nor instructive. Coolidge explains the real lessons that resulted when individuals lived up to America’s special ideals, “These settlements were at first trading-stations. They required little in the way of government and absolutely nothing in the way of protecting themselves against any infringement of their rights by the authorities at home. They needed no independent establishment to guard their liberties. They were not unmindful of religion. It is related that after holding a council of peace with the Indians, where the tomahawk was buried, the Dutch promised to build a church over it so that it could not be dug up, an evidence that, in their opinion, peace was supported by religion…Religion was followed by education.”

“…Joined to these Dutch and English defenders of liberty, differing from them in particulars but agreeing in the broad essentials of human freedom, were the French Huguenots. America became the common meeting-place of all those streams of people, great and small, who were undertaking to deliver themselves from all kinds of despotism and servitude, and to establish institutions of self-government and freedom.”

Ultimately, these ideas of “personal judgment” came to religious matters and “set the common people to reading the Bible. There came to them a new vision of the importance of the individual which brought him into direct contact with the Creator. It was this conception applied to affairs of government that made the people sovereign. It raised up the common man to the place which, heretofore, had been reserved for a privileged class in church and state. It ennobled the people. The logical result of this was the free man, educated in a free school, exercising a free conscience, maintaining a free government. The basis of it all, historically and logically, is religious belief. These are the fundamental principles on which American institutions rest…It was because religion gave the people a new importance and a new glory that they demanded a new freedom and a new government. We cannot in our generation reject the cause and retain the result.”

On Patriotism

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Yesterday marked twelve years since the despicable attacks against the innocent thousands at their jobs in the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and against the passengers of Flights 175, 11, 77, and 93. The depth of hatred for this country by those who withhold freedom from their own people and choose death as a weapon against all who oppose them, is unfathomable. There is no reforming it, there is no justifying it, there is no understanding it. There can be no conciliation with evil.

Many of us still remember the shock we felt from that day. Despite best efforts to the contrary, we are forever changed by it. But the way we responded as Americans deserves equal remembrance. We joined together, united in our common identity as Americans, comforting those in grief but resolute in who we are and what justice demanded be done. We flew the flag proudly, without shame or apology because we were not to blame for the wrongs inflicted among us. We knew America was the moral force for good in this world. It was not a blind refusal to see her faults, but it was not a psychotic inability to see the immense good America represented. It was the power of its ideals that rekindled a genuine and nationwide patriotism.

It was not long before a small percentage of the population — members of the modern Left — embarrassed and disgusted with this “corny” love for country, began a drumbeat that would not only discredit President Bush but dispirit and divide the nation again. The flag has long been offensive to them and so it ought to be intolerable to others, they intoned. For these unhappy souls there is nothing to love without complete and absolute perfection. It is no wonder they are so unhappy here. The appreciation of what is good and beautiful in this imperfect world must be quite lost on such sad people. Even with confronted with the only Perfection ever to visit earth, they reject Christ, ridiculing anyone who wears the name Christian.

It was clear patriotism had to be redefined if the Democrat Party was ever going to win another election. A simple love for country was too much to espouse for these discontented folks. Hillary Clinton stepped forward to laud true patriotism as dissent, the courage to see and criticize America’s faults. Howard Dean screamed the mantra that the flag belongs to everyone, not just Rush Limbaugh, despite the fact that the only persons burning it, cheering for its defeat and encouraging our enemies were Democrats like Dean. Of course, we recall Michelle Obama’s profession of pride in America only after electing her husband. Nothing remotely good or praiseworthy preceded this, apparently. Unprecedented liberty, opportunity, the individual exceptionalism that recurred for millions coming to America, our fight over slavery and the protection of civil rights, the story of our march from the political, religious and economic tyranny of the Old World did not count, it seems. Then there is the President’s distinction, when asked September 4 whether his credibility was on the line, between himself and America, saying, “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America’s and Congress’s credibility is on the line.” So America has to fend for itself when it comes to credibility? The President has no role in upholding American credibility now? Patriotism should not be exclusive to any political party in this country. It speaks to how far the Democrat Party has strayed from its roots.

Patriotism was not so confused a concept to Coolidge.

For Calvin Coolidge, “[p]atriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country. In no other nation on earth does this principle have such complete application…Patriotism does not mean a regard for some special section or attachment for some special interest, and a narrow prejudice against other sections and other interests; it means a love of the whole country.”

Coolidge did not live blissfully unaware of America’s short-comings, but neither did he insist all flaws be removed forthwith before disbursing love and admiration for his country. He always found a greater number of reasons existed to love, not hate, America. He refused to see only the negative. He lived in reality and as such knew patriotism inspires improvement through the pursuit of ideals. It has defined America’s entire history.

Coolidge would drive the point home when he said, “Not to know and appreciate the many excellent qualities of our own country constitutes an intellectual poverty which instead of being displayed with pride ought to be acknowledged with shame.” It is the systematic ostracism of showing our patriotism that should shame the modern Left. The love for America they refuse to understand or at least respect, exhibits a spirit not of enlightenment and objectivity but of closed-mindedness and intolerance. Coolidge expressed respect for our flag and what it represents even more frankly, when he said, “He who lives under it and is loyal to it is loyal to truth and justice everywhere. He who lives under it and is disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere.”

They would mock and scorn what Coolidge said next about encouraging patriotism, “We must eternally smite the rock of public conscience if the waters of patriotism are to pour forth. We must ever be ready to point out the success of our country as justification of our determination to support it.” Or, when he said to the National Education Association concerning American children, “patriotism is always to be taught.” Or, finally, when he spoke to immigrants in 1925, saying, “Our America with all that it represents of hope in the world is now and will be what you make it. Its institutions of religious liberty, of educational and economic opportunity, of constitutional rights, of the integrity of the law, are the most precious possessions of the human race. These do not emanate from the Government. Their abiding place is with the people. They come from the consecration of the father, the love of the mother, and the devotion of the children. They are the product of that honest, earnest, and tireless effort that goes into the rearing of the family altar and the making of the home of our country. They can have no stronger supporters, no more loyal defenders, than that great body of our citizenship which you represent.”