I wrote the following last Saturday, with the state of Arizona on my mind, in a fit of anger. Soon after, I decided against posting it. I am doing so now that the far more thoughtful Jill Lapore has expanded on my closing gripe.
Like the Irish, Scottish, German and English indentured servants as well as the enslaved Africans before them, today’s de facto indentured servants from Mexico and the rest of the war-torn, debt-ridden Third World are a stark reminder that there will always be a gap between the letter of the Constitution, which abides no distinction between any man or woman, which is blind to race and class, and its interpretation; a stark reminder that rights on paper are nothing without the conscience to protect them; that justice can be bought and sold.
The sorry spectacle earlier this week of grown men reading a legal compact as if it were a prayer; what ostentatious, self-aggrandizing horseshit. The Constitution has no magical powers when read aloud; it does not reveal its true meaning by being chanted. Its only power comes from how it is interpreted and applied, how it is debated and revised.