On the Relative Merits of the First vs. the Fourteenth Amendment, and Art
First Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment
It ought to be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that the first amendment is better than the fourteenth, and therefore a greater achievement. Why, you may ask? Well, lets examine them through my biased lens of historical perspective.
The First Amendment was something that no other government in the world at the time had the balls to do. At the time, there was no "free world" yet. The fact that a bunch of exiles and emigrees felt strongly enough about it to take on a superpower (and win) in order to create a free world makes the achievement even more impressive. Compared to the Fourteenth, in which the U.S. government was following the lead of the rest of Europe, the First is the greatest, most unneccessary contribution that Homo Sapiens have made to the planet, in all of history, evar.
Before we get to Art, it is also neccessary to highlight that the Fourteenth amendemnt is an aesthetic turd compared to beautiful elegance of the First. In three lines of text, the First Amendment guarantees four rights that are the bedrock of the rest of American society. Right now, in other parts of the world, people that rarely smile are using their governmental power to actively control what the people that they oppress are saying, writing, worshiping, and gathering for. The Fourteenth Amendment is two pages long. Two pages! The majority of it deals with post-Civil War issues, and it spends more time delivering a big "fuck you" to anyone who supported the Confederate States than it does guaranteeing equal protection under the law. And did we pass this amendment because we held it as a self-evident truth? Was it ratified because everyone realized that all men (still not women yet) were, in fact, created equal? Nope. We killed 700,000 of each other before we got around to making it law, and then gutted the important parts in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Finally, to Art. But first, as an explanation for the existence of this post (besides the fact that it is all true), I should say that this whole mess got started during a toast to our favorite amendments that Maurauder and I made on the Fourth of July. I think it was either our fourth or fifth round of tequila. At some point during our reasoned discourse, one of the other 10 coolest women on the planet said that what she does (produce and teach art) was not that important. I was up to my neck in hand-grenade pins at this point over the constitution, so I did not even engage her on this one. But in retrospect, that assertion totally drives the false-o-meter in the red before making it shudder and explode. (Are you imagining a spring coming out of the now broken false-o-meter? Then you've got the right picture.)
Now, really, to Art. In the year 3028, when we make peaceful first contact with extraterrestrial giant sentient squirrels, there will be a period during which the achievements of both cultures are compared. What will nobody care about? That Isaac Newton and Fluffytail both "discovered" calculus. That Kyle Marcrum and Longwhisker were the first from each species to go faster than light. That Alfred Nobel and Beadyeyes McPinkNose both made a fortune putting carbon and nitrogen atoms in a configuration stable enough to transport yet which would yield a bunch of energy when detonated. These are not discoveries. They are not achievements by great men/squirrels. They are things that have to happen in a society (given the existing resources) in order for it to make it into space in the first place. The greatest people on earth (from this perspective) are our artists. Instead of unearthing the path that every society will eventually take during the history of universe, artists create things that are not neccessary and are not part of this historical/scientific imperative. The things that teenage squirrels will be learning about us in middle school are who Michaelangelo was, and Picasso, and Rodin. (Okay, I know this will only be the case if the space squirrels have the capacity to see light in the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum that we do, but lets stick to the topic here... I also am not unaware that the list is a bit male/eurocentric, so please tell me all about your favorite female artists).
This is also why the first amendment is the best. Societies existed just fine for at least 4000 years before 1791 without it. It is not a derivative work of something else done by another country. It is aesthetically pleasing. And it has created or been indirectly responsible for more happiness than all of the other amendments put together.
First Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment
It ought to be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that the first amendment is better than the fourteenth, and therefore a greater achievement. Why, you may ask? Well, lets examine them through my biased lens of historical perspective.
The First Amendment was something that no other government in the world at the time had the balls to do. At the time, there was no "free world" yet. The fact that a bunch of exiles and emigrees felt strongly enough about it to take on a superpower (and win) in order to create a free world makes the achievement even more impressive. Compared to the Fourteenth, in which the U.S. government was following the lead of the rest of Europe, the First is the greatest, most unneccessary contribution that Homo Sapiens have made to the planet, in all of history, evar.
Before we get to Art, it is also neccessary to highlight that the Fourteenth amendemnt is an aesthetic turd compared to beautiful elegance of the First. In three lines of text, the First Amendment guarantees four rights that are the bedrock of the rest of American society. Right now, in other parts of the world, people that rarely smile are using their governmental power to actively control what the people that they oppress are saying, writing, worshiping, and gathering for. The Fourteenth Amendment is two pages long. Two pages! The majority of it deals with post-Civil War issues, and it spends more time delivering a big "fuck you" to anyone who supported the Confederate States than it does guaranteeing equal protection under the law. And did we pass this amendment because we held it as a self-evident truth? Was it ratified because everyone realized that all men (still not women yet) were, in fact, created equal? Nope. We killed 700,000 of each other before we got around to making it law, and then gutted the important parts in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Finally, to Art. But first, as an explanation for the existence of this post (besides the fact that it is all true), I should say that this whole mess got started during a toast to our favorite amendments that Maurauder and I made on the Fourth of July. I think it was either our fourth or fifth round of tequila. At some point during our reasoned discourse, one of the other 10 coolest women on the planet said that what she does (produce and teach art) was not that important. I was up to my neck in hand-grenade pins at this point over the constitution, so I did not even engage her on this one. But in retrospect, that assertion totally drives the false-o-meter in the red before making it shudder and explode. (Are you imagining a spring coming out of the now broken false-o-meter? Then you've got the right picture.)
Now, really, to Art. In the year 3028, when we make peaceful first contact with extraterrestrial giant sentient squirrels, there will be a period during which the achievements of both cultures are compared. What will nobody care about? That Isaac Newton and Fluffytail both "discovered" calculus. That Kyle Marcrum and Longwhisker were the first from each species to go faster than light. That Alfred Nobel and Beadyeyes McPinkNose both made a fortune putting carbon and nitrogen atoms in a configuration stable enough to transport yet which would yield a bunch of energy when detonated. These are not discoveries. They are not achievements by great men/squirrels. They are things that have to happen in a society (given the existing resources) in order for it to make it into space in the first place. The greatest people on earth (from this perspective) are our artists. Instead of unearthing the path that every society will eventually take during the history of universe, artists create things that are not neccessary and are not part of this historical/scientific imperative. The things that teenage squirrels will be learning about us in middle school are who Michaelangelo was, and Picasso, and Rodin. (Okay, I know this will only be the case if the space squirrels have the capacity to see light in the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum that we do, but lets stick to the topic here... I also am not unaware that the list is a bit male/eurocentric, so please tell me all about your favorite female artists).
This is also why the first amendment is the best. Societies existed just fine for at least 4000 years before 1791 without it. It is not a derivative work of something else done by another country. It is aesthetically pleasing. And it has created or been indirectly responsible for more happiness than all of the other amendments put together.
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
you're never around here man. are you having a crazy busy weekend out in the desert?
last night I engaged in a hardcore marathon political debate with G and our friend Kevin. Sertiously, 6 hours strong. you should have been there. it was teh rad.
~M
where are you going with this, dare I ask?