The Second Greatest Moral Statement In All Of History
The American Constitution is a complex legal document meant to describe how a
Democratic government can operate. It was revolutionary at the time it was written
and works very well considering how original it was. Again though, it is a legal
document. On the other hand, the Preamble to the Constitution is a short, brilliant
moral statement.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States
of America.
We make this law to create a nation, for the benefit of ourselves and our children
that will have justice and peace, and that will defend its citizens.
I didn't phrase it any better there. I just restated it to promote some thought
about what it says. It's an amazing statement. If I wanted to interpret it into
the terms of biology and morality I use, it would be something like: Our group,
using the laws in this document as a strategy, will create a nation of people with
the social order necessary to make a peaceful and just civilization (an ecology)
where we and our children can survive and prosper.
And that is what the New Ecology is all about, creating a new ecology, commonly
called a civilization, which is the life support system of humans. It is as
necessary as food and water to our survival. It is something we create for the
benefit of ourselves and our children. This has actually been done before, but
it was always based on military force. The American experiment was based on
common agreement. Much of the document was about how that government would be
formed. Most of the rest was about its powers. It was, in so many ways, a
Revolutionary idea.
It has to be noted somewhere that the Justice part is critical or the
agreement will fail because of to much conflict. Social Justice is a foundation of civilization and this new ecology.
Now, we can see that the experiment was very flawed. The winner take all
Presidential form of Democracy naturally leads to bipartisan gridlock. That problem
has been known for some time and why after WWII, the US gave Germany, Italy and Japan
a Parliamentary form of Democracy. Notice though that the moral statement of the
intent of the law, the Preamble, is not flawed. It's a pretty good universal moral statement
of what humanity is trying to achieve and why. I really haven't seen other statements
comparable to it. There are a number of documents similar to the "Bill of Rights"
such as the "Declaration of
Rights of Man and of the Citizen" and the United Nation's "Universal
Declaration of Human Rights". In those cases, they were creations of political
pains and they tend to be more about the relationship between individuals and their
government, though there is some discussion of family. For all their great value, they
can be quibbled with. The moral statement of the Preamble to the Constitution would
apply to all of them and can't well be argued with. All of them, all laws and forms of law, including Napoleonic Law
that is used so widely in the world, can be judged and validated by that moral
statement. That is the power of morality and why it needs to be clearly articulated
even if it is difficult.
Another interesting point is that this again illustrates that we are not a slave to our
genes and our instincts, aside perhaps to our deepest instinct which is to survive. We
make laws that would have been no use to the tribal peoples we came from. It seems that many parts of our "moral systems" are being replaced by legal systems, but our moral instincts can never be.