Political Editorial17:22 Oct 15 2007
Times Read: 711
I usually try to keep most politics out of my journal. This is a place I want to be creative or at least more personal. But the truth is I had an epiphany and I needed to put it somewhere. So, this being the only journal I have...it goes here first (while I send it to political websites and news editorial sections).
How Slow is a Change Meant to Be?
There is a belief today that politics or more accurately because of politics, change, must be enacted slowly on a population in order to pass the moderate sniff test and not offend enough of the majority of a nation's citizens. Something about this theory or philosophy never felt quite right and that nagging suspicion was hard pressed to leave my mind in recent days.
The more I thought about the slow progression of positive change - this 'evolution of revolution', the less I was able to find examples of it and the more I found I couldn't ignore that in my country and in my history, it simply wasn't so. I thought about positive influences beginning with our very establishment of a nation and moving up through our tests against slavery, gender equality, and poverty - and what I found throughout that history was that change, real positive change, occurred not as a calm and step by step evolution but by urgent reactions to respond to a fed up, angry and sometimes near violent constituency.
Our nation was founded upon a revolution...a revolution because the powers of government at the time: the King and British Parliament, were not listening to the colonies or responding to their needs. Because the government of the day responded with a heavy hand to the attempts at logical or diplomatic resolution. Because any change that was occurring was occurring to slowly or not at all. In response, the colonies shook off that yoke and acted against the establishment. Change occurred quickly and unfortunately through the violence of war but to the benefit of the colonies as the United States of America was born.
Through anti-slave trade acts in Britain, an attempt to slow slavery was made. Perhaps this was in line with todays attempts at slow change in places like immigration reform or gun control...but like many attempts at slow and tempered resolutions to moral crisis', it failed. Trying to slow slavery by fining the captains of slave ships, only had slaves thrown overboard to drown should authorities be nearby. In 1833, the British abolished slavery. I'm sure it was a very expensive and difficult time but the change happened quickly and resolutely with all british slaves immediately being declared free (and slave owners compensated). The U.S. was slower to move and in 1861, Civil War occurred on our nations soil as an attempt to hold together a country with two distinct views on both slavery and economic differences. While the war lasted nearly 5 years, and some saying even today that "the South shall rise again", change occurred quickly during those 5 years. This change albeit violent and nearly destructive to the nation, was change for the better of a people as a whole with American slavery officially ending on December 18th, 1865 through the 13th Amendment. Fast, revolutionary leaps of change for the better of a people as a whole.
Now while slavery was abolished, equality was far from real. An additional amendment had to be passed just two years later that gave everyone equal protection and due process regardless of race. The government and the voters who elected them in the U.S. was still largely white male property owners. It was over 50 years before women would be allowed the universal right to vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920. That change occurred after 3-4 years of public protest and activism with an 18 month protest in front of the White House. It took two years to pass the laws and a sweeping out of congressional members who opposed it and even then there was an additional two years of court battles to overturn state constitutions banning the female vote which ended in the Supreme Court in 1922. Again we see that although resistance to change and attempts to slow it added years to the process, the change itself was sudden and all encompassing and not at all a gradual shift of laws or powers.
Perhaps one could argue that the movement of freedom and equality for all was a slow evolution. After all, it was nearly a century after the abolition movement of the 1860's that we finally passed the Civil Rights act of 1964. In some ways, change was slow to take and was a long uphill battle. However, this long uphill battle doesn't seem to be a movement out of deference to a moderate middle ground. The changes occurred radically like individual battles to dislodge a conservative but powerful minority long after the moderate middle ground had conceded the need. In fact, it was almost always this conservative resistance that argued for slow change to the bitter end and it was always this conservative resistance that then attempted to tie change up in the courts for years afterward. Were it not for a select and powerful few or the resistance of a few states out of many, change would likely occur quickly and without struggle.
That conservative resistance is also the group that endeavors to slowly 'de-volve' those same freedoms and protections. The people that argue for a change that wont shock the system are the ones who quietly pass laws or pull the teeth from government enforcement and seek to reverse these great and forward thinking actions of a people who hold freedom and equality in places of honor. It is interesting to see that slow and steady can work to cause change when one is trying to overcome the will of the people. For while the regulations and protections of FDR's New Deal were again a all encompassing and fast revolution of progressive ideas that improved our great nation, the attempts to deregulate and de-fund or stop enforcing those ideas by the powerful few has been a slow and steady process behind the backs of Americans that has taken nearly 75 years to transpire.
It seems that positive and progressive ideas of great change happen fast with the nation deciding as one or nearly as one that something wrong must be stopped or that a move must be made to turn it right. For when something is right, truly right, it doesn't take much for the world to recognize it as so. Slow change, evolutionary law as it were is more the action of cowardice. It's the action of those who seek to undo the justice of our country or any other. It's the attempt to enact change under the noses of a constituency that wouldn't have it. Like the removal of freedom, the loss of privacy, the erosion of our protections and equalities, these things happen quietly and under the cover of fear and paranoia while what is good and just waits for it's chance to happen quickly, and with the strong voice of reason, once again.
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