THE CURRENT governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, seems to have been shaken awake by the news that 75,000 people have affixed their signatures to an online petition asking that the name of his father and predecessor in the governor's office be removed from a new $4-billion Hudson Valley bridge. He says he finds it "personally hurtful" that so many of his fellow citizens would efface his father's name from the bridge.
What a pity it's taken so up-close and personal a demand to rouse a governor whom we had not heard object as memorials all across the country are being knocked down, covered up, and generally sacrificed to the current rage for erasing history.
Instead let the country take its cue from the folks down south of the (state) border in Louisiana who haven't messed with the Huey Long/O.K. Allen bridge across the Mississippi River just because both those controversial political figures became the focus of scandals in their long and notorious careers. (Our favorite story about the Kingfish involved his ordering the removal of a specific piece of rooftop above the Louisiana Legislature's chambers, so it rained on one particular anti-Long lawmaker. And the old saw goes that a leaf once blew into Gov. Allen's office, and he signed it thinking it was legislation supported by his boss and then U.S. senator, the same Huey Long.)
Both of the governors' names remain on the bridge to this day, a testament that any supposed mistake in judgment may be left to stand as long as future generations are left free to reach their own time-seasoned conclusions about the bridge's name.
And so America stumbles on, like a one-eyed man in the land of the blind who sees clearly enough--if only the most familiar of landmarks aren't removed or, worse, transformed into stumbling blocks for no good reason except to get in his way.
As the current copy of the New Criterion, that fine journal, notes in its October issue: "The U.S. Constitution is, by a considerable measure, the oldest written constitution in the world. (Only half of the world's constitutions make it to their 19th birthday.) It may also be the shortest. The main body of the text, including the signatures, is but 4,500 words. With all 27 amendments, it is barely 7,500 words. The Constitution of the European Union, by contrast, waddles to the scale at 70,000 words--an adipose document the girth of a longish book."
And not a very inspiring book at that. There could scarcely be a better illustration that in statecraft as in business, simpler is better. Henry David Thoreau would certainly get our point, for his advice remains sound to this day: Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
It was James Madison who in the Federalist Paper No. 51 noted the twofold nature of writing a constitution that would endure: "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," he noted, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed." That is no easy job. But then, "in the next place [you must] oblige it to control itself."
For a blunt contrast, Dear Reader might note that the U.S. Code of Laws takes up some 53 good-sized tomes. And that's not counting all the Acts and Resolutions our Congress has been pleased to put on the record. Like barnacles, they weigh down the good ship U.S. Constitution. It ought to cut through the waters free and clear and sleek, rather than being encrusted by laws and lawyers. For where an observer finds one, the other is sure to follow.
Foresighted statesmen have taken the precaution of attaching sunset clauses to laws that tax already over-taxed citizens. Why not attach a sunset clause to this whole plethora of legislation, too, and start all over again with a clean slate? It's this backlog of laws that needs to be cleared away, not the nation's precious, irreplaceable memory.
Editorial on 11/21/2017