2017-07-06
by
Eleanor Goldfield
I would find it funny if I also didn’t find it so fucking frustrating that people say things like “where in the constitution does it say…?” when they’re trying to argue against a progressive idea.
Look, if your argument can only be held up by a document that is more than 200 years old and was written at a time when you could still buy and sell humans, when only 6% of the population could vote (white, land-owning men) & there wasn’t air conditioning, your argument sucks ass.
Thomas Paine warned of the dangers of a “political Adam” – the idea that decisions made by one group of people would be sacrosanct for all posterity. While there may be ideas that we want to perpetuate, it is the right and indeed duty of each new generation to question the laws and practices of the past and improve, throw out, create or otherwise make some damn changes to allow for progress.
So if the only thing keeping an idea from being thrown out is the fact that somebody thought it was a great idea 200+ years ago, it’s probably time to let that shit go. And if the only thing stopping a new idea from being adopted is because those same somebodies 200+ years ago hadn’t thought of it, first google the word “amendment” and tell me what you find. And then take your backwards ass to Williamsburg and sit and think about what you’ve done in a blistering Southern summer with no AC, internet or refrigeration.