NYC Letter: Unhappy Fourth Of July -- What If The Genius Of Our Times Had Been The Establishing Genius

Day 1,257 of CHOPE
D-minus 199 Days

Imagine if today's political class tried to arrive at a consensus bigger than food stamp subsidies. A consensus detailing the shared principles of governance and the irreducible freedoms of the citizen. [Pause.] Luckily, there is Europa so you needn't imagine how such a project might turn out.

What if instead of Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman -- what if our founding principles were written out by the likes of Bill Press, Jesse Jackson, Joe Biden, John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi, and Al "Green Fatty" Gore? [Pause.] Luckily there is Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest. Mr. Mead has channeled today's political geniuses into a single improved establishing document.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,

FIXED
By Walter Russell Mead

BLOG July 3, 2012 (TAI) - As part of our ongoing project to update and improve the core documents of American history, we present the opening sections of the Declaration of Independence as they ought to have been written, and indeed as it would have been written if the still primitive colonial political process had only been sophisticated enough to restrict participation at important conferences to the appropriately certified, trained and peer-reviewed experts who could have produced a document worth remembering.

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN
POST-COLONIAL, MULTI-RACIAL SOCIETES
OF NORTH AMERICA

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to strengthen the political bands which have connected them with the Global Community, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the cooperative and deferential station which a careful review of the relevant peer reviewed literature suggests is most appropriate for long term win-win outcomes, a decent and rigorously equal respect to the opinions of woman- and man- and transkind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the ever deeper union.

We hold these views to be consistent with the evolving cultural consensus, that all humans are equally obliged to the performance of certain Duties, that among these are the Participation in the Struggle against Racism, Economic Injustice, Genetically Modified Organisms, Homophobia, Nationalism and the Excessive Emission of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gasses. That to secure the performance of these Duties, Governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the considered Opinions of the Educated Classes, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Duty of the Enlightened and Credentialed Guardians of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the Unquestioning Performance of their Duties by the Less Enlightened Members of the Public. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Change cannot come too quickly to suit the Convenience and the Predilections of an Enlightened Minority; Governments long established should be changed the Moment a Sufficient Number of Well Regarded Contributors to the New York Review of Books have determined that such Change is Morally Incumbent; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that intellectuals who have never run anything in their lives are the Fittest of all Living People to remedy virtually any evil by abolishing the forms of Government, Laws and Customs of Society to which the brutish and unreflective Common People are accustomed. And when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Failed Dogmas of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy evinces a design to allow said Common People to evade all obligations to the Global Community, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide New and Expanded Regulations for the future better restriction of the Lower Orders as they deem Meet for the Purpose.

Who wouldn't trade down the original Declaration for these improvements?

CHOPE.

What if.