The beauty of the United States' Constitution is that any citizen, under the First Amendment, is free to fight for their right of opinion and actions in a court of law whenever their rights are threatened by the state or corporations.
In many countries where atheistic doctrines and ideologies
dictate government policies (e.g. Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China),
people are put in jail for expressing their personal beliefs, belonging
to a certain ethnic or social group or just reading the bible and talking about
it to other citizens.
So whatever political stand a citizen takes (and there are many diverse views, both constructive and harmful), Americans ought to consider themselves truly blessed that their nation is protected by a God-inspired Constitution.
That unique Constitution enshrines the individual and his/her right to freedom. But with the granting of individual freedom, there is the moral dilemma of being held to account for the good and evil in human nature and political governance. With great freedom, comes an even greater responsibility.
The first President, George Washington, warned the nation in his Farewell Address that man’s innate love of power will tend to create a real despotism in America unless proper checks and balances are maintained to limit government power:
“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another.
The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
A
just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which
predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of
this position.”
The
Parabolic Challenge
When man is given freedom to do as he pleases as long as he does not harm other fellow citizens, he can, by his own self-will, become a hedonist – a seeker of personal pleasures or at worst, a political nihilist - a person who believes that life is devoid of any moral meaning except to exercise power for himself and over his subjects. In other words, a despot as described by Washington.
But America’s traditional values
preserve the right of individual freedom for a higher and nobler cause, which
is the betterment of the human being, both economically, intellectually and
spiritually.
This polarity between absolute personal freedom
and conservative values is where the Constitution becomes a parabolic challenge
to human nature. In America's democratic republic, the citizen has the right to elect
his representatives to be in the executive (the government) but he/she does not
directly elect the president.
All elected representatives are beholden to Congress
in passing laws and policies. So the Constitution does allow American policies
to veer towards any political doctrine such as European style socialism or
social justice philosophy such as equal rights to LGBT as long as the party
that is in power has sufficient votes in Congress.
However, the true nature and vision of the
American nation as envisaged by its founding fathers is not one where the state’s
powers subsume individual liberty. It is still a nation under one God despite
the rise of secularism, consumerism and liberal values.
The U.S. Constitution’s commitment to religious
freedom is straightforward as the First Amendment bars Congress from making any
law "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof."
But, in the last three decades, liberal issues such as same sex marriages
have increasingly divided the consensus surrounding religious freedom: should Americans be
free to exercise a religious objection to same sex marriage or does the U.S.
Constitution mandate strict church-state separation?
Republican Ted Cruz made a sound defense of religious liberty when he said in 2016: "We're a nation that was founded on religious liberty and the liberal intolerance we see trying to persecute those who, as a matter of faith, follow a biblical definition of marriage is fundamentally wrong."
Hedgehogs & Foxes: Which Are You?
Using Isaiah Berlin's metaphor of the hedgehog and the fox, America is a hedgehog because it only knows one thing, which is individual liberty, even if that liberty is fought for in foreign lands for its own selfish and destructive interests.
This insight into America’s potential promise as a beacon to other nations was shared by Washington in his 1796 farewell speech:
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."
In contrast, fox nations tend to be secular nations that experiment with a
mixed bag of political doctrines and systems. They may evolve and learn to be
more efficient after going through many trials and errors in their histories
(Europe, China) but they are intrinsically adapting to and improvising with the
times with many strategies and tactics.
The world today has survived and thrived within
the market-based trading relationships between the hedgehog and fox nations.
But once the hedgehog nations lose their sense of identity and pretend to be foxes,
they will lose their way and eventually go into decline as a nation. Their
global influence and soft power will be eroded in favour of the fox nations, a
jack of all trades and master of none.
Today, in 2021, the U.S. constitution and its enshrined values is facing a great challenge with the controversial election of Joe Biden and the Democrat party.
Not since Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal has America encountered a more progressive and radical left policies under the Biden administration.
For instance, Biden has repeatedly proclaimed his firm belief that all Americans deserve a fair wage. In the proposed Equality Act (an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act which is up for a Senate vote), Biden emphasizes equality of outcomes based on gender, sexual orientation and race rather than a meritocratic system of equality of opportunities.
His promotion of Critical Race Theory in schools is a clear indication of a post-modernist
agenda of dividing people by race, gender and class.
And the tragic truth about the U.S. Constitution and the Republic is that the system allows this hedgehog nation to become a fox nation.
One may ask, is it morally or politically wrong to become a fox nation? No, simply because it is the free, democratic choice of the individual and the electorate, as a group, to determine the soul and destiny of his nation.
But it will be an outright disaster because it goes against the grain of America's true
identity.
The parabola of a prodigal son turning away
from the errors of his ways may be the current destiny of America. Will it be
too late for the nation to arrest the roots of its decadence?
Hopefully, Winston Churchill’s insight about Americans will ring true: "You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else."
And that, incidentally, is the way of a fox,
trying all kinds of ideologies and value systems to arrive at its ideal spot.
