The Grand Experiment

In 1788 our Founding Fathers established the Constitution of the United States of America. When ask what type of government they had given the people, Benjamin Franklin responded and I paraphrase: A Republic, if you can keep it. A Constitutional Republic was something that had never been tried before. This Grand Experiment, as it has been called, appears to being torn asunder at its very fabric.

Consider voting rights. This right is under attack after being so hard fought for over the years. Many contend that voting is not a right because it isn’t mentioned as such anywhere in the body of the Constitution. This belief totally ignores the amendments.

The Ninth Amendment, being part of the "Bill of Rights" reads: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Since the Constitution establishes a Republic where the representatives are elected by those represented, one would suppose that voting is a right though no enumeration exist.

The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) certainly believed such a right existed. The second sentence of Section 2 begins: "But when the right to vote at any election ..." Again in the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) its framers acknowledged a right to vote: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

So why is the right to vote under attack in so many states that are controlled by a single ideology? Is it, perhaps, an attempt to nullify the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which brought into the process many voters whom support a different ideology? Yes, these states defend their actions as working to curb voter fraud. However, in the 226 years since the Constitution was ratified, there has never been an election where voter fraud existed to the point that it altered an election. This defense is nothing more than a "red herring."

These states have gerrymandered their state to the point where a single ideology can win state election. Yet, when it comes to federal elections, which is controlled by the Constitution, they fail. So they are left with only one solution, remove from the voting pool those who support a different ideology. Sone of these states have even purposed gerrymandering the outcome of their state’s Electoral College votes.

Why has the election and re-election of our first racial minority President torn so hard at the very fabric of this experiment, the right to vote? Is the racial majority feeling so guilty about their treatment of minorities in the past, they are now paranoid about retribution? Since there is no evidence indicating that the Obama administration has done anything that discriminates against the racial majority, how else to explain the paranoia?

The experiment, while flawed in the beginning, did provide a means to correct those flaws. Three of those flaws have been corrected by constitutional amendments and legislation. The first was the elimination of slavery. The second was extending full citizenship to former slaves. The third was giving the vote to women, the Nineteenth Amendment.

Ninety-seven after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Congress finally did, through legislation (the Voting Rights Act of 1965) extend to all descendants of former slave the right to vote thus enhancing the freedom the amendment promised them. And Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment does extent to Congress the "power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Freedom, being very much a part of the Grand Experiment, does not exist without the right to vote. Now we have an ideology working to once again curb the freedom promised in the Grand Experiment, a promise that took 177 years to fully achieve, by restricting the right to vote.

Such action does tear at the very fabric of the Grand Experiment. If we allow it to be torn asunder, the aspirations and dreams of the Founding Fathers put forth in 1788 with the Constitution, no longer exist. We prove Benjamin Franklin correct when he questioned whether we would be able to keep and maintain a constitutional republic.