(no subject)
Wed, Feb. 25th, 2004 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterTrolling around and kind of starting to catch up on the FL, since I've been not really in an internetting mood lately.
Thoughts inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lenadances' post on civil disobedience, a topic very near and dear to my heart.
While I'm generally not a very patriotic rah-rah American, there is a kind of golden sheen in my head around the US Constitution that has been there for quite some time. The boy and I kind of poke fun at each other sometimes because I can have very un-American sentiments at times but have this shining ideal of the Constitution in my head while he in general thinks America is great but is leery of majority rule. And it's not that I think majority rule is this awesome thing. It's that I'm so in love with the idea of this document with checks and balances written into it, with a Bill of Rights too. I know it's not the only document out there like that, but it's the only one I studied in any sort of length (heh, yeah, in my school in Taiwan nonetheless! My govt. teacher made us read the whole thing). And I do think it's greater than the Declaration of Independence, because it's a living document.
I don't know, it sounds geeky in words, and much of it is tied up with the movement against slavery and the civil rights movement. When I was a kid, Martin Luther King was one of my heroes, and one of the few whose writings I can read and still greatly admire. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" makes me tear up every time. But it's just this idea, his "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." And I very thoroughly believe that. I read those little Scholastic books as a kid (and those Scholastic biographies) and was amazed and awed at the thought that so many people participated in sit-ins and protest marches that there were not enough jail cells for them.
Under the cynicism about America, I am a gooshy idealist at heart.
Is it presumptuous to feel a sort of awe because it feels like something like that is happening now because I am not actively participating in the movement or putting anything at risk for it? I always have this nidgy feeling that comes about when talk of any issues dealing with race (or sexual orientation, in the current matter) comes to bear because there is always a part of me that wonders if I am pre-empting something that belongs to other people. Do they have more right to it than me? It's from having done too many slash arguments and too many EAS readings on nationality and identity, I suspect, the result being the voice in the back of my head always commenting, great, this movie has a homosexual couple portrayed in a fashion that has them being a couple who just happens to be homosexual. But the heroine is still straight. What does that say? Etc.
And yet, in a sense, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement did a great thing for me too. Those people fought that battle in a sense for me and for all the other people who were not and are not the racial majority. I'm guessing the interracial marriage laws were there mostly to prevent black-white marriages. It's totally naive of me, but I guess up till now I never consciously realized there was an actual law against interracial marriage. Considering who I date now, it's a rather scary notion. And whoever repealed that law, the people who helped with that have given me something, fifty years later.
So that is all from me, because I am tired now.
Thoughts inspired by
lenadances' post on civil disobedience, a topic very near and dear to my heart. While I'm generally not a very patriotic rah-rah American, there is a kind of golden sheen in my head around the US Constitution that has been there for quite some time. The boy and I kind of poke fun at each other sometimes because I can have very un-American sentiments at times but have this shining ideal of the Constitution in my head while he in general thinks America is great but is leery of majority rule. And it's not that I think majority rule is this awesome thing. It's that I'm so in love with the idea of this document with checks and balances written into it, with a Bill of Rights too. I know it's not the only document out there like that, but it's the only one I studied in any sort of length (heh, yeah, in my school in Taiwan nonetheless! My govt. teacher made us read the whole thing). And I do think it's greater than the Declaration of Independence, because it's a living document.
I don't know, it sounds geeky in words, and much of it is tied up with the movement against slavery and the civil rights movement. When I was a kid, Martin Luther King was one of my heroes, and one of the few whose writings I can read and still greatly admire. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" makes me tear up every time. But it's just this idea, his "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." And I very thoroughly believe that. I read those little Scholastic books as a kid (and those Scholastic biographies) and was amazed and awed at the thought that so many people participated in sit-ins and protest marches that there were not enough jail cells for them.
Under the cynicism about America, I am a gooshy idealist at heart.
Is it presumptuous to feel a sort of awe because it feels like something like that is happening now because I am not actively participating in the movement or putting anything at risk for it? I always have this nidgy feeling that comes about when talk of any issues dealing with race (or sexual orientation, in the current matter) comes to bear because there is always a part of me that wonders if I am pre-empting something that belongs to other people. Do they have more right to it than me? It's from having done too many slash arguments and too many EAS readings on nationality and identity, I suspect, the result being the voice in the back of my head always commenting, great, this movie has a homosexual couple portrayed in a fashion that has them being a couple who just happens to be homosexual. But the heroine is still straight. What does that say? Etc.
And yet, in a sense, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement did a great thing for me too. Those people fought that battle in a sense for me and for all the other people who were not and are not the racial majority. I'm guessing the interracial marriage laws were there mostly to prevent black-white marriages. It's totally naive of me, but I guess up till now I never consciously realized there was an actual law against interracial marriage. Considering who I date now, it's a rather scary notion. And whoever repealed that law, the people who helped with that have given me something, fifty years later.
So that is all from me, because I am tired now.
(no subject)
Wed, Feb. 25th, 2004 10:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Feb. 26th, 2004 12:00 am (UTC)*crossing fingers* I really, really hope every bit helps, because I am so appalled and angry and totally ashamed that Bush has dared to suggest that this kind of amendment would even be anything close to ok. Not that I was very fond of the man before, but WTF?!