At the Center for the Constitution at Madison’s Montpelier, we’ve reached the end of Week One. This is a week long seminar for American teachers who have worked hard to dig deep into Madison’s ideas about constitution making. It was a big finish too.
Noah Pickus, author of True Faith and Allegiance, asked participants to consider their role in creating a citizenry that rigorously interprets the Constitution by discussing it and making inquiries of it. Perhaps the biggest threat to our identity as one people has nothing to do with our immigration policy and everything to do with our tattered idea of who is a citizen.
Our efforts to make distinctions between natural born citizens who pledge their allegiance to the flag and naturalized citizens who take an oath to the constitution is missing the point. Noah suggested every citizen of the United States needs to take part in thinking constitutionally. We should each take part in a rigorous discussion of the constitution, interpret it and make inquiries of it.
So, this intrigued many of us and presented an important question to take back to the classroom, but this isn’t the post I sat down to write tonight. I started my instant messenger client to run alongside my browser as I worked. It generally leads to interruptions that keep me from getting anything done. This evening, however, there was an instant invitation to thinking constitutionally…
7:44 Pat
What is the rub for the Dems on drilling in ANWR? And drilling in the Gulf?
7:46 Shellee
On ANWR, it’s a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem and not even a good solution!
7:47 Pat
It’s not the solution but part of the solution
7:47 Shellee
Not part of the solution. It’s too little too late.
and maybe, just maybe if there was a bill for drilling responsibly in ANWR with an additional component of increasing fuel efficiency, funding research for alternatives…maybe it could get the votes it needs…maybe.
just drilling is just stupid
7:48 Pat
Well, they’ve been trying to drill there for over 10 years. They’ve now predicted twice the capacity of a few years ago.
7:49 Shellee
Saw a photography exhibit in Dallas with photos of ANWR. It’s an incredible space. Once you see it, and I can only imagine seeing it for real, I think it becomes a more difficult question.
7:50 Pat
How is it too late? We won’t be off fossil fuel for another 25 years.
So that’s it? Dependence on foreign oil for pictures in a remote place in Alaska?
7:51 Shellee
not about the pictures, it’s about the ecosystem. there are resources we need to be cognizant of other than oil
it’s not all about consumption…or shouldn’t be unless we’re simply a people of hedonistic gluttons. then there’s no problem
While it’s tempting to tell you I won this exchange with this question of who we are, the conversation continued. There were partisan accusations. He wanted to know if I believed in the global warming scam and I wanted to know if he was simply re-typing the transcript from Rush’s latest show. What broke through that, however, was this question of who we are and how to best use our resources to solve our problems. We were able to discuss what we agreed on: our dependence on foreign oil is a big problem; we have experts with specialized information about how much oil is available from ANWR; those individuals know more about the question than either of us.
A constitutional citizen doesn’t have to avoid a partisan dig (or two) but does need to see beyond them. There are often bigger questions at stake than the details we debate. Are we preparing citizens in our classrooms who will see and readily debate those bigger questions?
A. I have a 30-minute-each-way commute to and from school (work! to earn a living!) and
B. I have been to Alaska and have fallen in love with its wild, dramatic, other-worldly beauty.
As I see it, the question becomes one of reconciliation: day-to-day necessities (like health insurance for those of us with multiple medical issues) and long-term survival of a people, a polity, a world. It is not a question that admits of an either/or-level dichotomous solution; there MUST be a middle, or preferably higher, ground. Meet the short-term AND and long-term needs, with an even better solution than we can see today.
There is nothing inherently wrong with stop-gap fixes in the short run, as long as longer-term solutions are in the offing. If my diabetes is out of control, the short-term fix is extra insulin; the longer term solution is education in more effective glucose management. To use a more commonplace analogy, if a man is starving, you have to give him a fish initially to enable his survival before you can teach him how to fish for his continuing daily needs–otherwise he dies in mid-school (sorry about the pun!).
Obviously the energy crisis operates on a much larger scale, but the principle is the same. The fact that we need long-term solutions doesn’t negate the reality of the short-term. Yet even then, we can’t let the good become the enemy of the best.
OOPS oops SORRY sorry (my previous post needed proofreading!)
We all have some sort of commute, and none of us are going back to horses unless it’s our job to impersonate an 18th century President.
However, the idea of drilling is antifederalist; it’s backward. True forward thinking involves 1) a development of several alternative energies, dependent upon the market initially, yet eventually settling–as markets do–into forms which provide energy at a lower cost to the customer; and, consequently, 2) freedom from foreign oil ( a bit of a misnomer perhaps, in that only 1/3 comes from Middle Eastern nations).
In that we depend upon the markets, there may finally be some action with an incentive as gas nears $5? $6? $10..?/ gal. Up until now, It hasn’t been profitable, and our government hasn’t taken a Person-to-the-Moon type of initiative. I feel, had our first reaction to terrorism been how to shore up our defenses and limit our exposure to foreign issues, such an initiative would’ve been bold and even extraordinary: the kind of moment that makes your heart well and proud to be an American. It’s good for sovereignty, in the least. For in the end, we can’t change others, but we can change ourself. (Couldn’t someone just’ve bought the war machine a dang self-help book?!)
I, too, have been to Alaska. I look at pictures in a photo album of Portage Glacier, compare them to recent ones, and the glacier is no longer visible: it has melted “back” by hundreds of yards. Warming is happening.
What an intriguing Catch-22 the Alaskans find themselves in, in which a primary source of income (19% of U.S. oil from Prudhoe Bay) contributes significantly to greenhouse increase. How does the Constitution counter the greed as Native Americans exodus from islands with shrinking land mass as ocean waters rise, while oil companies reap record profits..? What will the people do?
Not sure on that.
What I do know is that this whole renege stinks of broken treaties with Native Americans. Doesn’t a protected area deserve the same consideration? (This one does have some Native peoples adjacent and/ or reliant upon its ecosystem, by the way.) We gave our Native Americans progressively worse land, yet discovered gold and finally stripped them of everything. As it stands, our National Parks are largely “rock and ice”, and now we want to harvest even that.
I think I have a realistic view of the world. Carabou are cute, and it would be tough to tell my six-year old that Exxon killed Santa’s reindeer. However, I might be willing to risk the loss a few species–not to save humanity, but to save the remainder of life. No large catastrophe in the grand play of evolution, really. But no one will guarantee that, even though wind power and solar would move us a long way toward that goal.
The Fifth Amendment states that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. Of course this isn’t private property, but what role then does the public play in this decision..? Is this a sacred trust with the American people that would be violated? What kind of vote would need to be taken? Do we need an Amendment to protect some of our places..? Or is it there in the Constitution already; isn’t this the people’s property?
Even if one has somehow missed the data on global warming, stick your face up into the exhaust of your car and take a deep breath: tell me that’s healthy. Your body cannot tolerate that pollution for long without serious consequences. Talk to one of the millions of kids in America with ashthma or a doctor who has witnessed the dramatic increase: people who know what is like to be a fish out of water. That alone isn’t the America we want for our kids; it’s not sustainable. And it certainly is not an America for the general welfare.
There’s no U.S. goverment without a polity. No polity wihtout a people. And no people without our green box to stand on. We will always have to respect natural law…as well as remain subject to the ever-present laws of nature.
Hearing Noah speak, I realized that an investment in the Constitution may involve a personal risk, yet the reward is ownership, control, and understanding.
Of course, I also realized I have a dozen new questions..!