Letting go of the past; grasping the future
I do not know how to improve on the future of the nation if we are so insistently wedded to the habits of the past that we refuse to release our two-handed death grip on old mottos and faded dreams.
The first rule of wing-walking is to not let go of the strut behind you until you have a firm grasp on the strut in front of you. But at some point, the bravest wing-walker will relinquish his or her hold on the first strut in order to move across the wind-swept wing, strut by strut.
The same may be said of the existential endeavor in which advancing an entire nation is the goal. Not losing a grip on a sound foundational idea is a paramount tenet to be held until the secure pillar of the future is fully grasped. But that grip on the past must, perforce, be loosened and relinquished or no progress will be registered.
So, too, with our aging experiment with democracy. It is time to let go of those narrowly-informed characteristics, shaped by the Founders, that are of no help in our present need to advance to a more just and fair future — one which must be guided by contemporaneous practicality — for all Americans. It is past time to place the hoary government that sprang from the limited perspectives of an elite cadre of Enlightenment-bedazzled men into a respectfully curated repository of historical artifacts.
The Founders knew only what they knew
In their wildest imaginings, the wordsmiths of our origin documents could not have predicted what the 13 Colonies would become. With perhaps the exception of the aged innovator Benjamin Franklin, the privileged men of the organizing committees seeking to break the bonds of royal tyranny and harsh taxation had no inkling of the technologies which would emerge from then-nascent sciences.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke
