The Vision of our Founders?

And the Constitution was read…at least most of it.

I’m in my hibernating mood, so I haven’t been watching TV. Maybe this story was on all day yesterday and people are sick of it. I just got my taste of it from the morning newspaper. I love this about the newspaper – that you can get a taste. You can scan the headlines. You can read, or not read, the articles below them.

You can do it at the kitchen table. Your partner’s got the local section or the sports, and you’re having your coffee and the kids or the grandkid (in our case) is eating his shredded wheat, and you can look up and make a comment, which I didn’t this morning, but did yesterday over Bert Blyleven. He’s in the paper again today but I haven’t read that section yet. I got paused by the reading of the Constitution.

I’m not getting terribly well informed by reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press, but I guess I must be getting as informed as I want to be. It’s enough to spark my thoughts or my indignation or at times a tear. I can always search for more when I can’t get enough, but usually it’s enough, or too much.

Anyway, you might say today’s story on the reading of the Constitution points out a philosophy of mine. Actually Rep. Elijah Cummings said it as good as I ever could. He said: “Imperfection is not to be feared.”

He was referring to the sections on slavery that were omitted from the reading. The part where it said slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person. He was making a case that being able to improve upon what the Founders started with was a “blessing.” I might say that if you’re going to haul out the Constitution as a document to live by in this century, then you haul it out – the whole thing – so you have to recognize that we can’t claim to stick by the Constitution (or anything else) unilaterally when some of it is wrong-headed.

My philosophy of imperfection isn’t about correcting mistakes of the past or condoning them. It’s more about how flawed human beings can still be leaders and poets and parents. How people without the personal constitution to succeed in the world as it is are still people. How the poor might not be so poor if they weren’t counted as overly flawed and in need of fixing, or due to enjoy three-fifths or less of the benefits of Constitutional freedom. The poor, of whatever race, religion, or sexual persuasion are in my view the new minority, those oppressed and denied what the wealthy can claim as their rights.

My point is that if you’re going to see slackers and the vulnerable and even the working class as so imperfect – imminently flawed for needing help once in a while – then lets start seeing the greedy that way too for causing the need. If you want to repeal health care reform…fine…start taking away the million dollar salaries of the CEO’s and the “right” of the medical supply companies and the pharmaceutical companies to make a fortune. Let’s call our leaders to lead, even while they hang on to their money and let’s point out the flagrant imperfection of 1 percent of the population controlling 40 percent of the wealth.

I hardly think that was the vision of our Founders.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, Reading of the Constitution triggers tussle. Jim Abrams, Associated Press. 1-7-2011, 4A.