The time has come for a new declaration of independence.
By: don mikulecky
Published On: 11/1/2008 9:17:51 PM
crossposted from Daily Kos These times are like none I have experienced in my 72+ years! I think that we have a unique oportunity to take stock of ourselves and our relationships to each other that may never come again. Old definitions can be trashed and new ones born. It is time for the people of this and every other nation to redefine what we as people want to be our guiding values from this pont on. There are many reasons foy saying this, not the least of which is the disintegration of the language we once held dear in our declaration of independence. A partial list might include "freedom", "liberty", "rights", "government", "people" ... You get the picture. These words had meaning then in a very specific context, yet they have been thoiught to transcend that context. Just how far can that transcendence be carried? Look beneath the fold and explore this notion with me. Maybe we can help ourselves understand what "change" really means.
It has been a particularly vicious election campaign. That is especially true because one candidate has consistently focused on the real human meaning of this election, namely the values that were behind the words in the Declaration of independence, while the other has focused on an entirely different symbolic meaning. You see, John McCain is fighting to preserve the old context for those glowing words in the Declaration of Independence. He is clinging to a time when beautiful words could be uttered and everyone would know that they did not apply to everyone. That time is over. If you are going to say those things you'd better be ready to deliver, not just here within these illusory National boundaries, but everywhere.
The reframing of the words in that document has failed. The words are sucsessfully carrying out a semantic struggle that does transcend context. Just as the notion of "democracy" has come to be realized as something we are striving for, not a commodity we can export. Here we are on the eve of an election so important that words fail when we try to come to grips with its meaning. What is foremost in the minds of so many of us? Whether democracy is even going to be possible at its most fundamental moment. The moment when we elect our government.
Our forefathers worried about democracy being stolen by others outside the country. We are worried about whether it can happen from within. There is the place where the new declaration has to be focused. For, until we can gather together in mutal trust, have our issues debated, and then engage in an electoral process that assures us that everyone gets to vote and that every vote gets counted equally, we are living in a fairy tale!
I don't know about you, but I am tired of being threatened. I am tired of the widespread acceptance of the possibility that voting will be turned into a mockery of itself still one more time. In fact I am fighting mad. Those are the chains I want to be free of on Tuesday. Will we let it happen again?
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