(AP file)
There is an anecdote famously told about the Constitutional Convention of 1787-1789. This convention which, historian Catherine Drinker Bowen called the Miracle at Philadelphia, was the extraordinary gathering of some of America's best minds with an eye towards drafting a Constitution.
The Articles of Confederation had not done very well and a new government document was needed. James Madison had a proposal pretty well sketched out in his saddlebag but there was much debate and much horse-trading behind closed doors and draped windows as these brilliant men tried to craft a government document which would serve the needs of this newly freed country.
Most of us would say that whatever problems we've had with Constitutional issues since, they did brilliantly.
This Constitution has been amended just a handful of times. Indeed the first time it was amended, it was amended 10 out of 12 proposed amendments all at once that would become known as the Bill of Rights. That was the deal that the authors of the Constitution made with Thomas Jefferson, who was serving in Paris as our ambassador at that time. He was concerned there was not enough specific recognition of these inalienable rights that he referred to in his Declaration of Independence.
The anecdote from this period told by Ms. Bowen has to do with the chair in which General Washington had been sitting during the Constitutional Convention in that hot summer of 1787. Carved into the back was a radiant half sun.
In September of 1787, with many delegates not wanting to support a Constitutional proposal, they were inching towards a final vote hoping to find enough votes to adopt a proposal that they could then submit to the colonies, when Benjamin Franklin rose to address the delegates assembled and make an interesting observation.
He stared thoughtfully at the chair and then commented to the people around him, "I have often wondered about how difficult it is for an artist to paint a rising sun. How do you paint a rising sun without having it look like a setting sun as each are represented in the same basic way." And so he said that on difficult days of negotiation, on darker days when it looked as if we might never get a Constitutional proposal, he told the delegates, "I wonder if that sun on the back of the general's chair is rising or setting."
As Franklin talked to the people around him, they began to take the vote and as it became clear there were enough votes to adopt the Constitution, Franklin proclaimed, "I have the happiness to know that it is indeed a rising, not a setting sun."
I thought about that anecdote today when I read a series of articles linked in the Huffington Post on that very question: Is America's day over? Is the sun setting on the United States of America. Have we seen our best days?
Ronald Reagan said in one of his inaugural addresses that our best days were yet before us. Morning in America.
I wonder. In one of the articles, written by Rick Newman of US World News & Report, New Yorker:
If we're lucky, the recession is winding down, and life will start to feel a bit more comfortable before long. But that doesn't mean things will go back to the way they used to be.
The global recession that began in America's housing market has shaken the world's economic order and possibly knocked the United States down a notch or two. The spendthrift American consumer is out of money. American wages are flat. Despite some hopeful signs, the U.S. economy could muddle along for years.Meanwhile, actions in China—rather than the United States—may have been the initial trigger for a global economic recovery. Many other nations will grow faster than the United States over the next few years and command an increasing share of the world's resources. "The message to Americans," says Mauro Guillen, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, "is you need to redouble your efforts to be more competitive."
Mr. Newman says there are four things that will plague America and that may be our undoing. He says, in America:
--We don't like to work anymore.
--Nobody wants to sacrifice anymore.
--We're uninformed in America.
--We're a self absorbed, entitlement attitude "iCulture."
We may be chastened by the recession, but Americans still believe they deserve the best of everything—the best job, the best healthcare, the best education for our kids. And we want it at a discount --or better yet, free-- which brings us back to the usual disconnect between what we want and what we're willing to pay for.
What a horrible malediction that is. Depressing, isn't it? True? Is Newman onto something here?
I don't suppose he expects this to happen overnight; it will take a few years yet, but are America's best days behind her? Have we grown, as he suggests in those four observations, lazy, uncompetitive, uninformed and self-absorbed?
Or is he wide of the mark?
Or as Dr. Franklin observed about General Washington's chair, is the sun setting on America, or rising? Why or why not?
Are the Good Times Really Over? - Merle Haggard
Comments
Are America's best days behind her?
Not necessarily. But if we continue down this socialist path then a big YES!
We get the type of government we deserve. Obviously, when we have a majority of people with their hands out going to the polls to elect socialists and Marxists our best days may be begind us. Our type of government can now best be described as an Idiocracy. The inmates are running the asylum...and we've handed them the keys.
Oh, yeah, the good old days when there were no sidewalks or sanitation, where everyone had guns and there were few laws.
We are at our best right now and get better every day.
Socialists and Marxists? Keep up those dumb comments while calling yourselves conservatives and you'll marginalize the GOP even more than it already is.
I agree with Kevin.
Seems to me there are better ways to answer a question like this than by tossing around insults. The many changes occurring in the world present difficult challenges for this country no matter who is in office. We won't be any better equipped to deal with them by dividing ourselves with dumbass partisan sniping.
With the kind of way that obama is leading us, it looks like communism almost to me. A quote that i think he might be saying right now is "We'll just raise the debt ceiling a bit more....they won't notice" YEAH RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
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