The winning of meaning

Pardon me while I ponder out loud. Is it the responsibility of national political parties to ensure that their candidates meet the qualifications for office? If SCOTUS decides it’s a political question, rather than a question of constitutional law, that an ex-president be allowed on the ballot, but then is subsequently persuaded, after securing an electoral college win, based, perhaps, on another SCOTUS decision about something like hanging chads, that the presumed winner is indeed not qualified to hold the office because of the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, who failed? Or did our entire system fail? (Our current SCOTUS has little respect for precedent.)

I Voted button  --  but what does it mean?

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m not arguing here about democracy versus some other kind of political system, I’m thinking that we have evolved into, de facto and de jure, a dysfunctional system in which politics and laws are intermixed and intertwined, compounded by the fact that we speak and write in a living language that changes over time, even something as basic as “is” and the ability to distinguish between present and past tense [was]. According to former President Clinton:

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

I can fairly easily envision a scenario in which the election is thrown to either the House or SCOTUS and the shooting starts almost immediately after a decision is announced because great numbers of voters believe, with quite a bit of justification, that the system is rigged against them and those like them. So, the real question becomes “what can anyone do to prevent such a scenario?” We already know that if a certain ex-president loses, he is likely again to claim that the election was stolen, without any proof. Could we be faced with a SCOTUS responsible for the destruction of democracy as we know it, or would the blame fall to the Republican political party?

A Nation's Strength

William Ralph Emerson

What makes a nation's pillars high
And its foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

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