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The Constitution Needs a Friend Like You Bruce Petrie

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The Constitution Needs a Friend Like You Bruce Petrie The Constitution Needs A Friend Like You Bruce Petrie THE CONSTITUTION NEEDS A FRIEND LIKE YOU BRUCE PETRIE ©2020 Bruce Petrie All intellectual property rights reserved. Cover Art: Constitutional Conversation by Bruce Petrie oil on canvas, 36” x 48” CONTENTS Opening: Why the Constitution Needs a Friend Like You ...................................................... 1 Chapter One: Visualizing the Constitutional Composition .................................................... 19 Chapter Two: The First Compositionalist .............................................................................. 34 Chapter Three: Preambular Friendship .................................................................................. 38 Best Buddies: How to Constitute a Friendship ...................................................................... 61 Part II: Articles: A Republican Form ...................................................................................... 66 Chapter Four: A Republic ....................................................................................................... 67 Chapter Five: Federalism ........................................................................................................ 70 Chapter Six: Powers ................................................................................................................. 75 Chapter Seven: Education, Arts & Science ............................................................................. 92 Chapter Eight: Commerce ...................................................................................................... 99 Chapter Nine: Sacred Oaths .................................................................................................. 104 Part III: Bill of Rights, Amendments &Ten Friendships ..................................................... 108 Chapter Ten: Friend of Free Speech and Arts & Science Education .................................... 111 Chapter Eleven: Friend of Voting .......................................................................................... 121 Chapter Twelve: Friend of Religious Freedom ..................................................................... 126 Chapter Thirteen: Friend of Equality .................................................................................... 136 Chapter Fourteen: Friend of Public Safety ............................................................................ 160 Chapter Fifteen: Friend of Privacy ........................................................................................ 169 Chapter Sixteen: Friend of Justice ......................................................................................... 173 Chapter Seventeen: Friend of Public Health ......................................................................... 181 Chapter Eighteen: Friend of the Earth ................................................................................. 187 Closing ................................................................................................................................... 193 Sources ................................................................................................................................... 196 About the Author ................................................................................................................... 202 i Opening: Why the Constitution Needs a Friend Like You I stop by a small local bread shop in our neighborhood to pick up a loaf, the only customer in the place, wearing my mask like the employee behind the counter, a young lady making bread in a grey T-shirt with BAMA in large red letters. “So you’re a student at Alabama?” “Well, not yet, I’m a freshman and we start in a few weeks.” “Are you doing face-to-face classes?” “Some may be face to face, some online and hybrid.” “Well, I hope your freshman year goes well.” “Thanks,” she says, adding: “It’ll be harder to make friends, with all the social distancing.” She’s right. Friendship does have new challenges these days. Among the many disorientations of the pandemic is a distancing of friendships. Isolation from friends and others is a broadly and deeply felt experience. Simple, friendship-building things are now not so simple, like going for a group run, chatting at work, attending ceremonies like graduations, baptisms, weddings, throwing a party, meeting for lunch, watching sports with pals, hanging out, face-to-face conversations. All changed. The pandemic has highlighted things about friendship we perhaps took for granted. Of course, there are covid-related hardships and sufferings with sharper edges than separation from friends. Particularly hard-hit and poignant are the elderly isolated in nursing homes. Friendships in these strange times need extra attention, not less, an opportunity perhaps to realize what really matters about friendship, the different types of relationships we have and whether there are new and maybe different friendships we could work on. College is a particularly important time of life for friendship. They shape and re-direct our lives, influence the trajectory of our thoughts and aspirations, influence our character, chase away loneliness, look out for us, have our backs, draw us out of self-centeredness. College friends can stay with us for life, be in our weddings, know our kids someday, connect our careers, preserve some of our best memories. Friends are life witnesses. Remember when we all (fill in the blank)? And who wants all the witnessing to be on Zoom calls? With disorienting suddenness during spring semester 2020, campus closings created a whiplash migration of students moving back home, abruptly distancing from friends, dorms, college experiences, sports, new-found freedoms, in-person classes and teachers. Many students re-entered a changed home and community environment dealing with a host of disorientations: social distancing, job loss, illness, stress, stay-at-home orders and so on. How will we reorient our lives during the age of covid and its aftermath? Take a deep breath. You may be thinking: “Why are we talking about friendship in a Constitution course?” The Constitution is all about law, courts, cases, judges and lawyers, right? Friendship is a 1 nice thing, but I’m pre-law and friendship isn’t on the LSAT. The Constitution and friendship don’t have much to do with each other, right? They seem like opposites, with all the fighting and division going on in America right now. You may be wondering: why talk of friendship during national crisis times? Isn’t friendship constitutionally irrelevant when everything seems so decidedly unfriendly? No, just the opposite: now is the time to form a new type of friendship. Becoming a friend of the Constitution can help us overcome the unfriendliness of our times, the antagonisms of pandemic, unemployment, violence, inequality, division, hatred and fear. That’s a large claim, but this is the same Constitution that survived the battlefields of Gettysburg and D-Day. Becoming a friend of the Constitution is not for the faint of heart. It is, right now, one of the most hopeful things you can do. Does it strike you as unusual to imagine a friendship with what… an 8,000 word text? I guess if we can friend on social media, we can friend the only text without which there would be no United States. That said, constitutional friendship is much more than a friend on Facebook. As always, we can expect to hear loud voices of naysaying, those who are so entrenched in animosity and hatred for the other side that constitutional friendship is unimaginable. When differences and disagreements chronically default into hatred, when tribalism declares permanent enemies and digs trenches, there’s little room to imagine a form of civic friendship that can exist notwithstanding disagreement. Some naysayers are invested in division, profit from it, raising money by convincing others it will always be us Americans versus the other Americans who are the enemy. Some will say it’s just not realistic, this notion of constitutional friendship. Yet how realistic was it for 18th century Americans to imagine they could break free from one of the most powerful military empires of their time? As John Lennon sang to a much later generation: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us...” Constitutional friendship requires imagination, those who will stand up and say we have a dream, even and especially when the odds look like long ones. The good news is that the Constitution also puts its dream, the keys to its friendship, in writing, in the Preamble. Our more perfect union, popular sovereignty, general welfare, common defense, blessings of liberty, justice, domestic tranquility—these are the virtues and whys of the Constitution that help us navigate a true north in a crisis. Can we reset our compass? American history has answered yes to this for We the People, showing that we can endure, overcome, innovate, create, re-invent and make progress. Constitutional friendship starts with some willingness to unlearn, suspending disbelief, thinking boldly, breaking away from some shibboleths, pushing the reset button on what we think of both the Constitution and civic friendship. Perhaps, with a fresh look and open mind, we’ll realize that our views of both the Constitution and its form of friendship are too crimped. Maybe as we have personally grown and matured, our perception of the Constitution has not. Maybe our understanding of it lags behind, still stuck in
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