Taking a Constitutional
I have neglected this blog for far too long, mainly because of the depression I’ve felt over the dirtiest election I have ever witnessed, coinciding with a rise of hatred and division that I never thought to see in a land founded on the principals of the rights of ALL people to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But each time we fall, we need to get up and continue the fight. I thought now would be a great time to take a course in the Constitution. This is a college course at Nova University, which I get to audit for free as one of the perks of the Lifelong Learning Institute. Auditing means I don’t give a damn about the grade; I’m just in it for the learning.
One topic that I will be keenly interested in is freedom of the press vs. responsibility of the press, and what, in today’s world, constitutes the press. I grew up in the world of newspapers, and to a lesser extent, television and radio news broadcasts. These were organizations charged with gathering and propagating the news. A huge part of that job, in fact a key responsibility, was to verify that the news they presented was accurate.
In the current world of internet and social media, accuracy has ceased to be a concern. Nor does there seem to be any way to legally stem the inaccuracy. Tweets and posts circle the globe with the speed of electrons, no matter how well or often they are refuted. I don’t know if an answer will be found in the Constitution or our study of it, but I expect spirited discussion over both the First and Second Amendments.
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I try to get my posts to refer at least obliquely to my book, but this will be difficult. I once toyed with the idea of making Rev. Wilson one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that was underway at the time the story is going on, but he was needed more to ride herd on Aaron Collins, Jeremy Hardwicke, and of course Ralph Folsom.
So there is only the one reference, in which Wilson sermonizes:
“The Constitutional Convention is about more than the formation of a new government. It’s about the beginning of a great experiment, a nation ruled by laws instead of kings.
“I have been in regular correspondence with many of the delegates, and I tell you there is a great determination that they will sign no document that does not include a guarantee of our rights as men, all men, including Ralph Folsom. We will swear to a contract that says, among other things, that no man may be condemned without a fair and open trial, and that no condemned man shall be made to suffer a penalty that would have made Torquemada proud.”
I worried if it sounded a bit too flowerly, and my sister Bette confirmed that. She said it reminded her of the old Green Acres show, when Mr. Douglas would be making one of his patriotic speeches, and his listeners would be looking around puzzled, wondering where that violin music was coming from.