Moment of inertia is a place where I'll be giving more of my commentary, in a longer form, on select topics I cover in my newsletter Magnitude and Direction. The goal is to give you 10 to 15 minutes of interesting reading on a topic while you're still in bed - your moment when the inertia of being cozy in bed keeps you there, even though you're awake and getting ready for the weekend morning. I hope you enjoy hearing what I have to say about the topics I cover in M&D and encourage you to participate in the discussion as well.
There's nothing more patriotic than continuing to uphold the promise of progress.
More Perfect
Typically, the world only gets a Moment of Inertia out of me every other week or so (and usually a little longer than that), but, as is the case for many people, particularly meaningful dates and historical events warrant some additional introspection and reflection. The United States' Independence Day on July 4th has always been such a day for many and, in commemoration and reflection, I’m once again sharing the Moment of Inertia I wrote last year.
As the First Amendment points out, there's nothing un-patriotic about being discontented. Considering this country was founded out of extreme frustration with the political leadership at the time, we should never really be surprised when that very first American tradition is carried into the present day. Indeed, as the very existence of the Bill of Rights makes clear, this country was never intended to be static.
A powerful genie was let out of the bottle 245 years ago when men said political power should come from the people, rather than divine right or military might. Ideals were laid out and principles put forth that were indeed greater than the people who had chosen to elevate those ideals and principles to the level of a government.
The same country that was put together and run by slave owners for the first 89 years of its existence ended slavery. The same country that was put together and run by white men gave men of color the vote, then women, then (eventually came around to) re-assert the suffrage of people of color. The same country that, for so many generations, was unwelcoming of immigrants and foreign interests eventually became the scourge of dictators and tyrants and the de facto voice for democratic ideals around the world.
Now, I wrote that previous paragraph as though all these things were said and done, but you don't have to put the news on for very long to know that we're still very much working through all of those issues, and more. It would've been great if the United States had just started right out of the gate with universal suffrage and equal rights, but look at who got to write the Constitution. Just like with anything else, any voice you don't have at the table is a collection of interests and concerns you can't be sure you're addressing.
That's the ironic beauty of the United States, though. The men who wrote the Constitution, who were so set on the idea of slavery, they specifically wrote it in to the original document, also empowered slavery to end without replacing the Constitution with a new one. Much like the metal superstructure of a skyscraper, the United States is supposed to bend and flex without breaking - that's where the strength comes from.
In particularly tall buildings, though, it can be scary to stand at the top while the structure beneath bends and sways. Adding more and more reinforcement to stop that swaying, though, will only make you feel safer. When such a structure is made too rigid to bend, flex, and otherwise adapt to its environment, that environment ultimately causes the building to come crashing down. The skyscraper must continue to sway, just as the United States must continue to change.
As comedian Cameron Esposito pointed out on Twitter, "[s]ince zero women & zero people of color weighed in on US constitution when it was written, I assume it may occasionally need a few updates." The good thing is, whether the framers anticipated this future or not, they put together a document that can be updated, rather than one that must be thrown out and started from scratch.
America is the continuous commitment to deliver on a promise, to form a "more perfect union," and to ensure the freedom, liberty, and enfranchisement of all its people. We're not there yet - I'm not even sure we're close. If we want this country to continue to bend without breaking, though, we have to keep working to uphold these ideals, and to understand that the ultimate actualization of those ideas will very likely be greater than ourselves, just as they were for our founding fathers.
For a country with a 244 history of, slowly but surely, giving more power to more people, we can do nothing less.