the Constitution: I'm no longer the me they created

Aloof: removed or distant either physically or emotionally. (Merriam Webster)

From my earliest recollections growing up, living as a military dependent, I looked at the world with rose colored glasses. Everything was easy, good, and simple, especially if it involved being a cowboy, never minding or understanding the life risks Dad was taking being a fighter pilot. So, when I was first able to watch television, westerns, to me, bespoke everything right. Sure, there were bad guys, but the good guys always prevailed. That was until I saw the movie: The Cowboys. Being a kid, my world stuttered. I learned in an instant the good guy did not always win, he sometimes lost as evil played a hand in life. So, living the dependent life, and never having had to face hardship, I guess in many ways I was aloof towards everything.

As well, in the machinations of growing up, and having to move roughly every three years, when Dad was stationed at George AFB in California, the desert was my playground. In my aloofness, I spent the majority of my free time alone, doing what else, playing cowboys and Indians while Vietnam was in full swing. And, in light of the war, I did not see the world as it was, nor did I understand how the country was supposed to be. And trust me, being aloof stayed with me for years. So, by the time I graduated high school, because of transfers, I’d been through four different high schools. In my world, being aloof was better. Then, as the years passed, Barbara and I married, and gadzooks, we had a son. Aloof was no longer an option. Finally understanding the gift of life, I embarked on an adventure: Going through the motions of opening my mind to the world around me. In the process, I began to wonder if the balance of the country is as aloof as I was, or just doesn’t care.

Except, the problem of not caring or those who believe they can trust in those who lead, all of us will one day see the results of both failures. So much, I believe the events taking place in Israel today have the potential here in the States to make 9/11 look like child’s play. And trust me, something will happen. The ongoing border dilemma bespeaks it. Our government is intentionally foisting the travesty on an uncaring, mostly uneducated public. And while everything I write is based on the philosophy of my aloofness in youth, one thing I have learned: Life is not fair, and the government cannot make it so. Plus, it wasn’t designed to do so.

So, my desire in writing Ricology, while my words may appear repetitive, there is a purpose. The idea being: One cannot work to change another’s perspective of the past and future unless they understand the nation’s design of intent. Conversely, the Framer’s intent of design. And like our day’s past in school, lessons were repeated until one was able to grasp the foundation being taught. And in that vein, some of the pieces I post were written years ago, possibly creating an overlap of thought already presented. The one today being such, as I present a philosophical view of our framing from a country narrative perspective:         

I was conceived during tumultuous times in a nation divided. Thirteen disunited colonies, encompassing a land mass larger than their governing island state of England. To gain independence, a war; revolutionary, civil, and world in nature was brought forth to change history’s course. God ordained, in a David versus Goliath moment that would have never succeeded had God not ordained. In the process, some believed loyalty to a king’s benevolence brought safety, while others, desirous of self-government, set in motion a tsunami never witnessed in human history. Yet, for the combatant’s outcome to prevail, free will being part of human nature, divine interventions hand interceded:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … (Declaration of Independence)

Creator: The being or person that creates. Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth. Ecclesiastes 12

Create: To produce; to bring into being from nothing; to cause to exist. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1 – Both definitions: Webster’s 1828 dictionary

Those three Rights tantamount: Life, Liberty, pursuit of Happiness. God given, thus government not providing, but protecting them. So, to implement the change declared through declaration, a new government had to be formed. Thirteen colonies becoming thirteen semi-United States under Articles of Confederation. Partly implausible, as the implied united could require generations to fulfill, possibly too altruistic for the human mind to conceive, yet: A strong sense of the value and blessings of Union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a Federal Government to preserve and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and well-balanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer. (Federalist 2)

And during the revolution after the Articles were ratified, cracks and faults began to manifest. So, a new form of government was brought forth to compensate for the flaws in the original. But, in all things involving human interaction, the heart and mind can be weapons more dangerous to a perceived outcome than the pen, even though the pen is mightier than the sword. Except, and through design, a government of and by the people, inclusive of human desire for power and greed, at times requires deliberation to course correct when needed. A design to perfect what may have had flaws initially to protect and defend the future of posterity for generations to come:

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting Federal Government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an Empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. (Federalist 1)

The result, a nation of peace, not aggression, a government designed to protect its citizens from attack, providing a pathway to prosperity, not prosperity itself. A system of governance unlike any other ever created. Three branches of government, with a fourth branch, the people, overall in charge of the three: 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 (Preamble to the Constitution).

And the intended outcome was to create a societal betterment for posterity to experience a future enhanced, protected from those desirous of autarchy (absolute power): Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter will readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country …  (Federalist 1)

Once formed, the desire to dismantle became apparent and sadly, but constitutionally: I’m no longer the me they created. Over time and through an implemented societal breakdown, the intent of my design has been purposely lost in the outcomes of today. Free will and a desire to usurp power for intent and purpose, the machinations of evil’s desire to change and control what God intended for good.

So, in closing, if learning from the past is to understand design, including wrongs committed for any mistakes made then, human by action, heart by influence, it also allows a perspective to see any deceptions perpetrated. But the nation today: ethically, morally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt. And everyone is responsible for the ultimate outcome, while also bearing full responsibility, as the debt of absolute bankruptcy we’ve created will be paid by those generations behind us and those yet to come. Ask yourself: Will there be anything left to rebuild? In all things, one must fully learn, head and heart do not always coincide with an outcome desired. Conversely, the constitutional knowledge of WE THE PEOPLE should be better than the deceitful intent of the few. It all depends on desire and one not being aloof.