Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
NATIONAL DISINGEUOUSNESS
NATIONAL DISINGENUOUSNESS
"Disingenuous" is the unprincipled currency of American tradition in law, education, journalism, etc. By "disingenuous" I mean being other than genuine, frank, sincere, true; at the same time pretending to be what history has shown it not to be.
By "currency" I mean the method, the accepted medium of interactive exchange, among and between the elite elements of American society.
That "disingenuous" witching hour came to be very early in American history. The American masquerade became real in 1789, when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, that was drafted in 1787, to replace the earlier "Articles of Confederation" that were drafted in 1781, that was based upon the "Declaration of Independence" of 1776, that was based upon a trade war with Great Britain, pitting moneyed interest versus more money, masked in shibboleths of divine freedom! and equality of all!
In 1787, delegates gathered to cure, it was disingenuously averred and advertised, to amend, the defective "Articles of Confederation" that had already proven to be too weak of a tax collector, for the surging ambitions of those disingenuous conveners of 1787. These men desired another, stronger, more masculine governing national document, for our young nation, which, yet fresh from national-annealing war's revolutionary ideals and natural dislocations, had not found its true identity.
Rather than "curing," however, the actual Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Constitutional Convention showed that "curing" was not its actual objective, so much, as remaking, redrafting, refashioning, the national ideals away from freedom, and equality to conform with the teachings of revolutionary war: that taxation with or without representation was necessary for a nation of any kind and, for any era to survive or to prosper.
This fact is shown by the fact that the so-called "Bill of Rights" came into being in 1791, two years later than the Constitution. Now how could anything but a disingenuous government forget about the basic freedoms that are so famously enshrined in the first ten Amendments and touted as its rationale for being? Did the thief leave a clue like Cinderella "lost" her shoe?
The mask was hastily put back in its place on a white American face.
Rhetoric about freedom could ring from sea to shining sea, but money, bundling , controlling, disposing "we the people's" combined tax money or tariffs were the real reasons for re-creating our new government to align with ambitions of certain elite men.
it had carefully masked itself as a gathering, not so much to remake the "Articles" which had invested peer power among the states, but to form a new government, while not seeming to do so. This new one "disingenuous" government, to say the least, would give voice to bold ennobling human sentiments, as were before expressed in the "Declaration of Independence," while retaining autocratic, oligarchic controls of the money. Words would say one thing. But, deeds would do disingenuously, the contrary .
In short, we would have a strong, centralized, federal Constitution, whose powers would be vested in three inter-connected branches, not diffused into the 13 bickering states; whose national "checks and balances" would be based on money, power, privilege, color, in favor of "white" majorities.
To this end, It approved the 3/5's Clause enabling black slaves to be added to the total number of white people in a state in determining its Southern political representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Of course, no black slaves could vote, by law. They were political placebos. They existed in form, but not in effect, vital force, or power.
Even worse, slaves, free blacks, i.e. Africans, were later decreed, less than a century later, by the United States Supreme Court in 1857, not even to be included within meaning of the word "people" as set forth in U. S. Constitution's Preamble , viz., "We, the 'people' of the United States," in the "Dred Scott v. Sanford" case. Conflict over slaves in our country came in a "Civil War" to some a "Freedom War" to others, 1861-65. Slaves were freed. But their money was still captive to the pre-Civil War Constitution's allotments.
Such an official historical juridical declaration plainly showed just how "disingenuous" the nation was at aboriginal base! "black man have no rights that white men are bound to respect." So history has shown!
This is still true of blacks'money, true for their collective freedom of all kinds!