Successful nation-building eventually gets around to the paperwork. Blood, sweat and tears won't quite seal the deal. For that, we have come to rely on ink too.
Now it's Iraq's turn. In an intricate political dance of commission, committee, legislature and electorate, along with the heavy-breathing oversight of the United States, Iraq is set on a course to put its nationhood into writing.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday July 28, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 89 words Type of Material: Correction
Founding documents -- An article about constitutions in Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine cited the following passage and attributed it to the Bill of Rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . ." That's from the Declaration of Independence.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday August 14, 2005 Home Edition Los Angeles Times Magazine Part I Page 4 Lat Magazine Desk 2 inches; 87 words Type of Material: Correction
The article "Words on Paper" (July 24) cited the following passage and attributed it to the Bill of Rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . ." In fact, the text is from the Declaration of Independence.
Call it a "constitution." It is a big word, one of the biggest in the lexicon of human progress.
The process we know, we venerate and we romanticize: Liberation begets statesmanship, and statesmanship begets a constitution--an end, and a beginning.
A constitution means hope. Or, a constitution means hardly anything at all.
*
"The citizens . . . are guaranteed by law: (a) freedom of speech; (b) freedom of the press; (c) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations."
By contemporary standards, the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union was inspired.
Not only were basic freedoms recognized, such as freedom of expression, but the government went the extra mile and pledged "printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights."
Freedom of worship was safeguarded. "The church in the USSR is separated from the state, and the school from the church." Women were granted equal rights with men, as well as equal pay and a guarantee of equal "rest and leisure." Equal rights according to nationality and race were secured--and further, "any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law."
In overseeing the drafting of this constitution, Josef Stalin yielded not an inch of high ground to Jefferson or Madison or Washington, or any of our own Founding Fathers. As it happened, Stalin also orchestrated the police-state killing of millions of internal political "enemies" and sent millions more to concentration camps in one of the world's most shocking displays of tyranny.
One of those to die in a Soviet concentration camp was Osip Mandelstam. His offense? He wrote a poem about Stalin that ended:
The murderer and peasant-slayer,
His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips
Sometimes, constitutions are no more than New Year's resolutions: good thoughts that don't stand a chance.
*
[W]e . . . know that only those remain free who use their freedom, and that the strength of a people is measured by the welfare of the weakest of its members.--Constitution of the Swiss Federation
At a ceremony in autumn of 2003, George W. Bush expressed his worldview in a sentence: "America owns the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but the ideals they proclaim belong to all mankind."
Americans are crazy about constitutions. You can read Bush's words as generous or imperious, but the significance of our Constitution and the guiding principle of constitutions in general are among the few things that won't get you a political argument in these contentious times. Just about every step in America's civic life traces a path back to what our Constitution puts into writing, or, as is most often the case, what we divine from its words. And why not? In arguing for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Thomas Jefferson called it "unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men."
An odd thing about a constitution: It is a bigger idea when it occupies space in the back of our thinking. Pull it to the foreground and give it a good going over, and it loses some of its magic.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . ."
Wait. That's not the Constitution.
" . . . that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
That's not the Constitution either.
" . . . to build by the exercise of our right to self-determination, for ourselves and of our own free will, a single political community which is based on our common consent and the rule of law so as to ensure lasting peace, an irreversible and thriving democracy and an accelerated economic and social development for our country. . . ."
Nope.
"The people shall have the right to fish."
Hum.
(The first reference comes from the Bill of Rights, the second from Lincoln's Gettysburg address, the third from the Constitution of Ethiopia, and the last from Article I of the California State Constitution.)
Actually, only 52 words in the U.S. Constitution reach for the sky:
