Examine, if you will, the Constitutional Convention. Congress was summoned to Philadelphia to discuss revising the Articles of Confederation. James Madison arrived eleven days early. Oh, hang on. Back up, sorry. This was after Thomas Jefferson sent him two trunks containing twenty-one books on political histories. Even Thomas Jefferson knew which tiny horse to bet on. Madison was preparing for this dustup by reading the political histories of the Greeks, the Swiss, the Dutch, and the Germans. I nodded off just writing that list! He was boning up big-time, while the other congressmen were probably hanging out with Jefferson and Sally Hemings, smoking bongs and getting “jiggy” with “it,” whereby “jiggy” refers to, I think, penis play, and “it” refers to the female vagina. This was pre-Constitution, remember, so anything goes. Or went. Shit was goin’ down like a David Lee Roth video dressed in the wardrobe and furniture from Amadeus. Meanwhile, our man was making carnal advances of his own upon his homework in as stiff a fashion as he could muster, utilizing all the myriad mental powers of a brain engorged with blood like an erect John Thomas (bringing that metaphor to completion).
Let’s also remind ourselves that George Washington did not want to attend yet another reunion of his highfalutin, loudmouthed, smarty-pants cohorts. Washington was tuckered out from fathering our nation, and he just wanted to recline on the porch and get his snack on at Mount Vernon. He was obstinate and likely would have succeeded in avoiding the sausage party had not our Mr. Madison hauled his insubstantial fanny to Washington’s side and convinced him that his attendance was imperative to the successful carrying of the day. Spoke Madison to Washington, “It was the opinion of every judicious friend whom I consulted that your name could not be spared.” Now, I am not saying that I am sitting here ogling some man-on-man Greco-Roman wrestling magazines and singlet/headgear catalogues, but if I were enjoying such fare, I may well have Madison to thank for lighting the figurative fire under George so that he was subsequently able to ensure that such freedoms would one day be mine to enjoy in the comfort of my own domicile. Harrumph.
To resume: Madison arrived eleven days early. Did he leap about the room, commanding the attention of the assembly with his winning flourishes and fulminations? Did he sing the truths of American democracy into every ear present? Did he run a deep flag pattern, burning Aaron Burr, who stood futilely holding his own jockstrap while Madison caught a fifty-yard toss from General Washington for a game-winning touchdown, resulting in a flamboyant Madison nut grab and moonwalk across the end zone? He did not. He sat closemouthed as near as he could manage to the action, and he took notes. And, because the delegates were sworn to secrecy, his notes actually became the invaluable record of the convention.
A note about arriving early: I am of the opinion that, if you are habitually late, it is inconsiderate to others and also just inefficient, but I am not here to discuss that particular imprudence. What I am suggesting, for myself if no other, is that being on time is also frequently not good enough, if I want to do as good a job as possible. My dad taught me to get there early. Case the joint. Examine the lay of the land. Evaluate the facility, find out where to piss, see if there’s a drinking fountain. Evaluate the breeze/draft patterns so as to determine the best location from which to stand freely farting and escape detection. What are the pros and cons of the balcony versus the orchestra? I like to experience life, whenever and wherever possible, at a steady pace that some might call laborious. I suppose this makes me much more of the proverbial turtle than the hare, but I firmly believe that slow and steady wins the race. Madison had the perspicacity to roll into Philadelphia with eleven extra days to find his footing, scout the location, canvas the participants, and begin to weigh fairly all the information that was about to be dumped into his lap.
Coupled with punctuality, the other meritorious quality in this set of bookends is follow-through. Again, my dad crops up in the mental “how to live effectively” manual that he and my mother painstakingly installed in my tool kit. When I hear the word follow-through, I am immediately reminded of my dad’s lessons in shooting a basketball and throwing a baseball and swinging a bat. Follow-through is what produces the backspin on a basketball shot, that stabilizing centrifugal force that allows a greater level of consistency to be realized in one’s shooting percentage. The same technique can be applied to any task one undertakes in life, inspired by the idiom “If you’re going to do a job, do it right.” Wittingly or no, Mr. Madison was certainly an initiate into this school of practice, because his follow-through in regard to the Constitutional Convention was extraordinary to a degree that can be described only as “nothing but net.”
His commitment to the ultimate American thesis, our Constitution, was superhuman. He refused to leave the site of the historic proceedings with the single exception of dire visits to the thunder closet, overextending himself financially to the point that he was flat broke by the end of the convention. These straits required him to borrow a hundred dollars just to get himself to New York, where, presumably, there would be an ATM at his disposal. Once the convention disbanded and the document was drawn up, it then required ratification, or considered approval, from the many delegates, who had returned to their disparate home states. Madison proceeded to canvas mainly his home state of Virginia, debating the merits of the fledgling Constitution with his fellow lawmakers, resulting in a successful ratification in the summer of 1788. This taste of victory would prove to be a brief comfort, however, as riding home from a debate at James Monroe’s crib that winter, he exposed himself to the elements to the point that he suffered frostbite on the end of his nose. His commitment to the cause of our nation’s success left him suitably decorated for life, in the form of a scar on his noble sniffer.
So, great, all these erudite honkies had gotten together and come up with a revolutionary new democratic method by which to govern a country, but the finer points needed intense scrutiny before the system could be deemed “ready for consumption.” In letters he exchanged with Thomas Jefferson, Madison was hell-bent that (a) the plan be ratified by the citizenry, (b) the people’s representation in Congress be based upon population, and (c) the power be divided between different branches of government; all of which turned out to be quite potent and effective ideas. I believe he also insisted that (d) upon voting, citizens would each receive three “smokeable papers for the rolling of tobacco products only,” which never really caught on except in the states of California, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Alaska. Along with Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and other, less famous white people, Madison fervently campaigned for the newborn Constitution to be approved. They energetically lobbied, visiting fellow congressmen and constituents in person, but the three also published a series of essays in support of the document’s ratification, which came to be known as the Federalist Papers.
Comprised of eighty-five (originally) anonymous essays, the Federalist Papers are considered to be the most influential factor in seeing the Constitution ratified into existence—the most influential, that is, after the three “factors” visible through Hamilton’s wide-open “barn door.” Madison contributed twenty-nine of these written pieces, which contain some of his most quotable sentiments, such as “Those miscreants who break breeze within a shuttered chamber, particularly if there be no draught of exhauste cleansing the vapours of the vestibule, I finde to be categorized amongst the most scurrilous and contumelious of the brute creatures with which Providence has graced this verdant paradise,” or “The clock reads but noon of the day, and yet I am but fatigued near to prostration. I would that our new Constitution might foment a climate of creativity by which our apothecaries may brew me a physicke in a tiny vial for to replenish mine corporeal form with energy for a surpluss of say, four, or even five, hours of time. A five-hour energy draught, if you will.”
Much less interesting, but perhaps more poignant to our discussion, is this portion from essay number fifty-one, Madison’s most famous quote: “If men were angels, no governme
nt would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: “No shit, James Madison.” But let me remind you that nobody had thought this crap up before. For spit balling, this was not a bad piece of work. I mean, sure, it seems that he was rather obsessed with angels, creatures of fiction much the same as faeries and unicorns, but I think he kept it under control enough to focus on the task at hand. Let’s just be thankful the Constitution doesn’t require any wee folk or thrumpins to command seats of political office. That is, as far as we know. Who can tell what the bylaws of Freemasonry demand? Not me, you silly goose, for I am not a Freemason. Don’t be ridiculous. Ahem.
Thanks largely to these efforts by the Federalist Papers’ authors, the Constitution remained alive, but the work had only just begun for James Madison. Remember that the colonies had just won their freedom from the tyranny of the tea-sipping British monarchy, and so the citizens were very nervous about the amount of power that might be afforded to this new federal government, and with good reason. I mean, we were not about to start a country in which we called the trunk of a car “the boot,” for fuck’s sake. The Bill of Rights came about as a reassurance to the people, to assuage their fears of an overweening central power by asserting their individual rights in writing. James Madison, aka “the Mad Jam,” expressed his opinion of this first set of constitutional amendments to be a “nauseous project,” but he knew that he had to get it together if he wanted the Constitution to happen. One substantial public concern was that by naming certain explicit rights of citizens, other unlisted, or “crybaby,” rights might then be limited.
These great thinkers like the Mad Jam had to take an unimaginable amount of bellyaching onboard from all sides and then hold true to their astonishing foresight. They had the Magna Carta as a starting point, sure, and they knew a lot of cool vocabulary words, I get it, but they had to combine all this knowledge, stir in a large scoop of gumption, and thereby concoct the bubbling loaf of our legal system, in which the people are represented directly in the legislation, and crimes would be prosecuted fairly in the judicial system. (I don’t know about you, but when I have to merely take down burrito orders for the eight of us at Offerman Woodshop, I grow befuddled and overwhelmed, and the last thing I can think about is making certain that everyone feels fairly represented. “Thomas, they were out of carne asada, so I got you a bag of tortilla chips and some tomatillo salsa. And half a churro. Get off my dick! Whattaya think this is, the Constitutional Convention? You don’t like churros? Why don’t you move to North Korea?!”) Therefore, the thought of equitably laying out a set of rules by which all Americans could be protected fairly equally beggars my feeble thinkin’ pan. Not only did the Mad Jam manage to accomplish this unappetizing task in the face of ambivalence and opposition; he did it all while running a campaign against his good pal James Monroe for Virginia’s seat in the first House of Representatives. In fact, it is widely held that Monroe would well have ridden his slight electoral edge to victory had it not been for the cold efficacy of Madison’s slanderous campaign slogan: “Mo’ Monroe, Mo’ Problems.”
A great deal of Sturm und Drang, not to mention blood, sweat, and phlegm, went into the initial sculpting of our governmental system. One of the most progressive aspects of the documentation detailing our newborn government, indeed possibly that decree’s most admirable attribute, is the fact that the framers of the Constitution made it fixable. To greatly simplify this notion: The men who wrote the Constitution included the special feature of malleability. If the pronouncements and laws of the American government didn’t altogether work for the people, why then, the people could change those laws with the help of their representatives.
Of seventeen proposed amendments to the Constitution, ten were ultimately approved by Congress and the states. These amendments were written precautions on behalf of the citizenry to safeguard individual liberties and place specific indispensable limits on government power.
There has been a lot of talk in this chapter about the “rights” of “the people,” and I just want to take a moment to remind us that at this juncture, “the people” referred quite specifically to white people who happened to bear a penis and testicles, which excluded “people” like women and minorities. I’m of the opinion that the crafters of the Constitution were all too aware of the conundrum in which they found themselves. I again refer to the duplicitous task of setting down the “God-given rights” of the individual in an era when a great deal of the economy was largely dependent upon the use of slave labor. I should think that this particular moral pickle played an important part in the motion to make these documents “correctable.” I would liken the situation to the modern dilemma regarding our voracious consumption of fossil fuels. By now we as a society have grown painfully aware that we are damaging our land and water and air irreparably via the extraction of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as by the generous amounts of resultant waste products with which we pollute the planet, yet we continue to simply shrug, grin, and doggedly drive our monster trucks across the continent, whining to our mommies if we’re unable to view the latest Disney fare on a TV screen in the backseat.
We’ll discuss more of that later, but the new American United States found themselves in just such a state of denial. It had dawned on the more enlightened members of the early legislation that perhaps these Africans who had been captured and sold like mules, and who were now being employed similarly like beasts of the field, bore an awfully uncanny resemblance to human beings. Really, it began to seem like these creatures from Africa were like human beings in damn near every way except for their darker skin pigmentation. Unfortunately, the notion of including these two-legged “commodities” of the slave-labor system in the greater discussion of human rights was utterly unthinkable, since the larger part of the economy, particularly in the then most populous state, Virginia, was utterly reliant upon this labor force to keep their tobacco, cotton, and other crops profitable.
If Madison had possessed the foresight to suggest that black people be included in this discussion of inalienable rights, he would likely have been taken out back and shot, presumed rabid or dangerously daft. Therefore, since he couldn’t begin to address the massively looming issues of civil rights, he did the next best thing. He punted. Correctly predicting that our nation would grow and prosper at an astonishing rate, Madison and his collaborators equipped this new national owner’s manual with a correctability, as though to say, “I know there will be some problems that we couldn’t get to in this initial Constitution, impressive though it may be, and so among its attributes will be its ability to be amended as time and progress require.”
The Bill of Rights was an astonishing innovation for its time. The first ten amendments were an extremely effective security blanket that allowed the people to feel like their well-being was on the mind of the administration, which was a great way to get the people to vote for said administration. Some of the amendments are rather drier than others, or outdated at the least, since they had to do with our nation being at war on our home turf, an important distinction considering that it’s been more than two hundred years since we have had to worry about “one if by land, two if by sea.”
So, for example, the Third Amendment, which reads, “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law,” doesn’t really have any effect on us nor will it for the foreseeable future, barring some cataclysmic reversal of planetary fortunes.
On the other hand, there are some amendments in that original ten that are getting a great deal of attention. Let’s roll through a few of these as a slight refresher,
shall we? If you’re anything like me, it may have been a while since you actually considered the letter of the law as opposed to whatever it is your favorite pundit has been spouting.
The First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Oh, hello. I believe the first part of this amendment refers to a notion I applaud loudly, the separation of church and state. Practice the religion of your choice, as you’re free to do, and keep it out of the public arena. It seems worth remarking upon that this was the very first protection Madison awarded us American citizens. PS: Those of you trying to recruit people to your religion may not be violating the actual written law, but you’re certainly pissing all over the laws of common decency. Jesus would hang his beautiful Nubian head in shame.
The second section, the one making mention of “freedom of speech,” has been of particular benefit in my life. For example, I am free to pen the sentence “Jesus would hang his beautiful Nubian head in shame” without fear of imprisonment, lynching, or, in the case of the Spanish Inquisition, being subjected to the Judas Chair, the Spanish Donkey, or the Crocodile Shears, all of which I would recommend you do not look up if you care to retain your lunch. These monstrous torture devices (in the name of the greater glory of the Catholic Church, no less) were once all the rage for punishing a blasphemer like myself, but not in America, you hypocritical sons of bitches. Thanks to our Founding Fathers, we can finally speak the truth without fear of chastisement on the part of our government. Generally speaking, that is. There have been periods in our history when subjects like communism, racial integration, Dixie Chicks lyrics, or most recently terrorist activities/Muslim leanings could land you in some literal hot water(boarding). Excepting those indiscretions or lapses in constitutional policy (whoopsie!), we are free to speak or print the truth and also to speak or print utter bullshit, and it’s up to the individual listener/reader to decide what he or she will swallow. Only in such a climate can free ideas be aired and exchanged, making the slow evolution of decency in our country possible.
Gumption: America's Gutsiest Troublemakers Page 5