These hatreds be getting old

How else am I going to learn about Mongolia or Albania without learning Mongolian or Albanian? (Most people in Ghana speak English.)

Unlike about half of the people in my country today (the United States of America), I like to meet people who come here from all over the world.

This brings us justlikethat to the U.S. Constitution, and the bogus claims of the slimy lying “originalists” on our Supreme Court.

Tom Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that the seventh reason that “impel(led) us to the separation,” was that King George III (aka the Mad King) “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither …”

Get it? Tom and Alex and those cats said we should secede from England  because the king was impeding immigration  to our shores.

So, how would the phony corrupt Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and their fellow rag dolls squeeze that into their so-called “philosophy” of “originalism”?: that constitutional questions must be judged in the manner in which the Founders would have considered it?

Let us for the moment defer what Alex Hamilton thought of internet spam, or what Amy Coney Barrett thinks Martha Washington thought of intrauterine devices. (No, really, let’s skip that one.)

But, hell, Martha was a woman. It didn’t matter what she thought. Abigail Adams neither.

What if the Supreme Court ruled today, in accordance with our Founders, that Black people, who had no right to citizenship in 1791, could not represent us in the Olympics?

There would be riots in the streets.

And if our Supreme Court Injustices should acquiesce, again, in obstructing Black people’s right to vote?

Half the country would change the channel and watch reruns of “Leave it to Beaver.”

Well, “No Democracy Lasts Forever,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, in a recent book of that name. Its subtitle is “How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” It’s his sixteenth book on constitutional law, and a good one, so long as you don’t mind seeing your hopes and illusions shredded.

In a trimly written book of 184 pages of text, with 542 footnotes (that’s not a non sequitur ), Chemerinsky makes an irrefutable case that our hallowed Constitution is a deeply prejudiced, outmoded document, conceived and written to cement the power of white, male landowners, and slaveowners, when we were a small, weak nation, and that this is unsuitable as our national framework today.

No wonder that today’s Republicans — our minority, yet dominant, power — are horrified at the thought of public schools teaching Black history. And the “three-fifths compromise” “enshrined” in our founding document? Perish forbid.

Chemerinsky’s book is not a mere tirade, but a solid argument, against entrenched minority rule, exemplified by the electoral college, which allots Wyoming three electors, one for each 194,000 Wyoming voters; while California’s 55 electors each represent 710,000 Californians.

How is that “one man one vote”?

Chemerinsky presents calm, reasoned arguments against the anti-democratic elements that are basic principles of our Constitution, and he explains how that came about.

The Constitution, without ever mentioning the word “slavery,” was written in defense of white, male slaveowners, to whose interests our Founders bent the knee — in order to get any Constitution at all.

By ceding power to small states, and making it impossible to amend the two-senators-per-state clause (Article 1, Section 3), the Constitution, and modern small-state senators, have arranged, through the filibuster, that senators representing just 22% of our population can block any legislation they care to.

And have done so.

And don’t get me started on Billionaires  Citizens United ,  which protects Elon Musk and other successful sociopaths from laws that might prohibit them, but not paupers, from throwing gold coins and stock options at lawmakers.

So far, so bad.

I disagree, however, with Chemerinsky’s final argument: that to rectify this calcified system of minority rule, we need to call a Constitutional Convention.

With due respect to the professor, I’d prefer to live under a Constitution written by quasi-powerless farmers in a weak nation centuries ago, than under a document drawn up under the influence of rich white men and corporations today.

Loved the book, though.