A Declaration of Independence

Originalists are royalists, and are trying to overturn American ideals of equality.

Two hundred and forty-eight years ago, representatives from the thirteen American colonies of the British empire declared their independence from the throne. The Declaration of Independence is one of the founding documents of the United States of America, and the ideals expressed in it have inspired people around the world ever since:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That's 111 words, less than 10 percent of the document by word count. The rest of the declaration is justifications of their rejection of the British. From the emphasis on grievances, you can tell that the delegates were feeling defensive about their decision to take this momentous step, and that it wasn't a decision taken lightly. You can also tell they had hopes for a better future, but they didn't know quite how their enterprise would play out. All they knew was that they explicitly rejected the idea that some people are better than others (hence no kings), that the purpose of the government is to help us get along, and that we all get to judge for ourselves whether that government is doing a good job. This is important, because we are currently engaged in a struggle for how to interpret and execute our American ideals.

People who call themselves originalists are claiming that the way to carry out American ideals is to look at what the Founding Fathers thought, and to adhere as closely as possible to that. They are using this to justify reduce the safety and happiness of people, to elevate the President to have unquestioned powers, and to claim that we have no right to judge. They do this by telling us the Founding Fathers were better than us, effectively deifying them. This is literally the opposite of what was intended.

In economics, crises happen because internal contradictions surface. For example, if everyone assumes that they can get rich by buying a house and selling it later, people who can afford to invest will buy houses, crowding out purchases by people who are trying to live in those houses. This creates excess demand that supports increasing prices for a while. But supply and demand have to balance, and eventually fewer people can afford to buy, prices will cease to go up, and everything unwinds. Fixing it requires us to be more careful about house purchases and avoiding internal contradictions, not burning houses to the ground.

We are also facing an internal contradiction with respect to political ideals. We support American democracy because we assume the government representatives are there to help us have a better society, respect our right to weigh in, and we get to judge their efforts. The Republican Party is running on the platform that the current government is too controlling, so we should vote for them to free ourselves from tyranny. We get freedom from tyranny by putting the law above any one person. And yet the Republican Senate ignored precedent to pack the Supreme Court with originalists, declined to impeach a would-be tyrant, have lined up to support that same candidate, and the Supreme Court has now declared that we effectively do have a king because presidents are immune from any oversight.

If something cannot continue, it will stop. The only question now if when and how. We still have the chance to elect a goverment of, by, and for the people who will return to the American ideals of equality and striving for better. History teaches us that the alternative is invariably bloody. I only hope that we, the people, realize the contradiction before it’s too late.