Death of the Constitution
In America, our government is ruled by two things: the people and the Constitution. The Constitution is the “supreme law of the land”. Every branch of government must follow it, and all laws passed must adhere to it. This over 200-year-old document is extremely important for the nation. It provides a common set of values and rights that are vital to the existence of the Republic. Both of the major parties use the Constitution to support their political agenda, but one thing that is appalling is both only choose to defend some aspects of the great document. These political “leaders” fail to accept that they must defend the entire Constitution as a whole. Upholding certain aspects, while ignoring others, is unjust, undemocratic, and dangerous.
In this country, we love to cry “Constitution” whenever the opposing party does something that we don’t like. That in itself is a good thing. It is, after all, the main purpose of the document, but our plea to uphold these rights are destroyed every time we choose to ignore other aspects of it. Conservatives love to make calls for gun rights and states’ rights, which is explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, but will neglect the Constitution at the drop of a hat, when a man wants to marry another man, as is his right under the 14th Amendment. Liberals will scream “equal protection” at you until they pass out, but the 1st and 14th Amendments become works of fiction, when a group of nuns say they can’t distribute condoms to their students, because it’s against their religion. We can’t do this. The Constitution isn’t something we can mold and shape to our pleasing. It is what it is, and it doesn’t change, because we want it to. If we keep manipulating it, then it will lose its power. It will become nothing more than a peace of propaganda used by the flavor-of-the-day politicians we tend to put into office.
No one will protect you when that happens, because politicians don’t care about Constitutional Rights; they care about votes. On a large scale, no one cared about who could marry who until it became something that could harvest votes. No one wanted to force contraceptive on people until they realized that there were people, who would vote to do so. People saw this as an opportunity to divide the population, and gain political power from that division. That’s where the second part of our government comes in: the people.
It is up to the people to decide whether or not the Constitution matters, and right now we are deciding it doesn’t. That’s not a single party or group. All of us have decided to forget about it by choosing the aspects we agree with and forgetting about the rest. We have to take it upon ourselves to protect the rights of all people, in every aspect. There shouldn’t be “Social Issues”, because we all know what rights we have. They are all written down, and it’s not hard to read trust me. We as a collective should recognize that it is in the interest of the whole nation to make sure our lives, and the way we choose to live them, is not interfered with. It’s not necessary to approve of a certain decision or way of living, but we all must accept that it is the right of the individual to make that decision. This game that we play, acting like one right is less important than the other is tearing us apart, and, unless we fix it now, the Constitution that we “love” so much is gone.