Two hundred forty-nine years and three days ago red-coated British soldiers marched into Lexington and Concord to quell rebellious Americans. Patriots on and near the Lexington town green and Concord's North Bridge across its eponymously named river skirmished with and then repulsed His Majesty's armed men. These were the first shots heard around the world -- the sparks that set off the eventually successful American Revolution.
Those shots should still reverberate. It is again time to revisit the values on which these Untied States were founded.
Last week, the citizens of Lexington, through their elected representatives sitting in Town Meeting (the town's legislative assembly) struck another brave blow against His Majesty. Instead of musket balls directed at his soldiers, the town's mothers and fathers in this modern age voted overwhelmingly to kill a proposal to invite King Charles III to celebrate next year's 250th celebrations of the shots heard round the world. A celebration planning committee had proposed such an entreaty to the King. But opposition voiced across the town was so vociferous, in some cases because of what eighteenth century patriots like brave Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Jonathan Harrington would think, that the proposition was swiftly denied.
It is not clear to the quiet suburban town's opinion makers who will be invited to join the festive commemoration next year. Fifty years ago, when Lexington remembered the 200th anniversary of the rebellion on the Green, President Ford arrived, shook hands with town leaders and officials, and even stooped down to shake hands with a clutch of fourth-grade girls and boys dressed in colonial costumes. Whether that precedent continues will depend next year on the identity of Ford's successor.
It may also depend on larger and more important issues: On whether losers respect the nation's laws and the results of what will be a bitterly contested presidential election in November. It will depend on the outcome of trials and the possible punishment and conceivable jailing of a contender for the presidency.
These United States today comprise a nation of laws strikingly and alarmingly split over obedience to those laws, over the interpretation of the meaning of those laws, and over judicial adherence or not to stare decisis -- to preceding court rulings. We are a nation decisively polarized and cataclysmically constrained by a well-intended electoral college that has outlived its purpose and twice recently has thwarted the popular will of the majority of voters.
Reform is always best if it arrives gradually, on the backs of broad-founded consensus. Yet, our present, dangerous, dilemma occurs because minorities (somewhat as the elite founding fathers intended) are today regularly going so far as to prevent the majority from having its way. The rollback of the right to abortion is only one social/cultural attempt to deprive half the nation of its previously granted ability to decide for itself.
The long-acknowledged acceptance that public (elected and appointed) officials who abused their positions for personal gain (cash, influence, jobs for relatives or retainers, votes) were corrupt has been dramatically eroded by Supreme Court decisions (McDonnell v U.S., in 2016) and, last week, by hints in a case involving the receiving by the mayor of Portage, Indiana, of cash for giving favorable attention to the bids of a company selling garbage trucks to his city. The Court implies that quid pro quos were not what they have always seemed (Snyder v U.S.). Prosecutors charged the mayor with violating federal laws that benefit any person who accepts anything of value intending to be influenced or rewarded. Several justices chose, as they did in McDonnell, to parse this restriction nonsensically to distinguish between inducements given before the act (a bribe?) and gifts arriving after the completed transaction (a gratuity).
Presidents Chester Arthur and Teddy Roosevelt fought successfully to minimize the impress of corruption in American life, succeeding by enacting important civil service merit reforms and bars to political appointments as well as restrictions on the contributions of corporations to political campaigns. The Supreme Court mistakenly took away the latter in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission in 2010. A presidential candidate threatens now to remove the Pendleton Act reforms of 1883, another potential destruction of everything for which the Patriots fought on the Lexington Green.
If the Patriots could be with us today, a good guess is that they would be astounded by the Supreme Court's attempt to use "originalism" as a reason to overturn reasonably popular and -- as retired Justice Stephen Breyer's new book adumbrates -- "practical" answers to severe problems of this century rather than an earlier one. That reflection applies especially and very strongly to the Court's relatively recent refusal to approve local and state attempts to restrict the ownership by citizens of murderous assault weapons, even after the repeated slaughter of totally innocent school children, adults caught in melees, and bystanders shot by often deranged gun owners. Moreover, the Court's interpretation of what the Constitution's Second Amendment actually says is based on gross misunderstandings (or purposeful misreadings) of its "original" meaning, according to a raft of accomplished historians. There is less originalism that meets the test of time, and much more rationalization (as in the abortion decision) to satisfy political tests.
In so many ways, the highest levels of our judicial system are acting as they do in some of the more compromised judiciaries around the world. In so many countries, high courts take their cues from politically elected or appointed executives. After all, their pay and safety depend on such considerations. Nothing so blatant happens here, but who originally nominated and appointed our top judges seems in case after case to influence the kinds of results that appear, the quality of judgments, and the extent to which hitherto little advanced notions make their way into decisions. We need only look today at the Federal courts in Texas, Mississippi, and Florida.
The writers of our Constitution believed (probably now unfortunately) that legislators, governors, and presidents would naturally conduct themselves in a tolerant way toward each other and toward their opponents. That they would not lie, would not spread disinformation, would not dissemble atrociously, and would thoroughly refrain from bullying and behaving ungraciously. Since that is now no longer the case, with polls showing that Americans trust their governmental institutions much less than they once did, the ambiguities and procedural weaknesses of the Constitution -- even including the Fourteenth Amendment -- have become glaringly obvious.
Nevertheless, in Lexington this week and last, there are still large measures of resilience. The rejection of an invitation to the King may give us some little hope that what began on Green, and continues near the Green, may metaphorically stand for the present and future rejection by all Americans -- even those who have joined us since 1775 -- of intolerance, prejudice, incivility, and blatant misinterpretation of what the Patriots wanted and for what their descendants have always stood.
My wife Sally and I were in Concord and Lexington last weekend to explore the origins of the Revolution. It was inspiring. Nice to have you bringing these universal themes into our current political morass. The rule of law is being sorely tested. All od us need to learn from our rich heritage that was sparked on the North Bridge.
The rule of law .... sadly & barely aspirational during the Trump era of the 21st century.
But a brilliant dissection of the stakes and their history!