Battle lines drawn, ‘Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong’
Matt Pearl
The single greatest obstacle to the notion of equality in the United States is this: we the people simply cannot agree day-to-day upon what equality means.
I know my definition: American Equality is the assurance that all citizens receive the same rights and protections as detailed in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. If government promises you more than this, it has overstepped its bounds; if it delivers less, the government is derelict in its duties to the people.
We have spent so much time, caused so many divisions and hurt feelings among ourselves as citizens of a nation, all because we refuse to take a constitutional perspective of equality.
The Founding Fathers left Black Americans out of their original promises, counting in slave states a black man as two-thirds of a citizen. That wrong has been constitutionally rectified. The administration of equality therefore has become (for many decades now) the responsibility of every American citizen.
Yes, you read that right. If Uncle Sam is protecting you day and night –and he is–part of your reasonable service to your government is to uphold its constitution, and to insist that it be upheld from one shore of this nation to the other
We have erred over the years, expecting cops and lawyers and judges to protect our rights: we should be protecting our rights, and with equal vigor should protect the American rights of the citizen next door. When you leave the police to ensure all of our bodily and property protection, one bad cop will make you hate them all.
We’ve done the same thing with lawyers and judges: made villains of public servants because you and I have grown slack in protecting our own rights and those of the people around us.
I’m not indicating vigilante justice, so I hope that’s not what you’re reading. What I am implying is that we have all as American citizens been promised certain specific rights. The denial of said rights to ourselves or to others is cause for you and me to petition the government to get to work toward restoring them.
It’s really all government is for, folks. To ensure that American rights are established and protected constitutionally.
But so often, we don’t know our rights, because we fail to read back over the U.S. Constitution once in a while. It’s a pretty quick read, and well worth an annual review.
If we would take personal responsibility in making sure that our rights were protected, we wouldn’t see Black Lives Matter coming to the forefront. When you stand up for a man, woman or child being oppressed, he or she knows that you care about his or her life. Actions speak louder than protests.
Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlotte–they’ll be punchlines to every conservative rant and be the strawman in every liberal progressivist movement until the citizens of this country figure things out.
People all want the same things: money, shelter, food and money. The ones who have those things can’t understand why the rest don’t just quit crying and earn them. The folks who don’t have those things can’t figure out why the other half takes credit for advantages they were born with.
It’s Stephen Stills again: “Battle lines being drawn–Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” Here we are again, almost 50 years after Buffalo Springfield sang it. No smarter. No more kind. No more understanding. We still lack mercy or sympathy. And why? Because at the end of the day, we each believe equality means having more than we do.
