Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

The Declaration of Independence and America's Disenfranchised American politics have actually been shaped so largely by the gender imbalance racism which has been an undercurrent to the nation's culture since well before its independence that it is almost difficult to detect today this institutionalized force without the impingement of a major incident. There is a meaningful argument that the presence of prejudice in our policy and in our lawmakers had diminished widely, not just over the course of our 2 and ? century history, but even over the last forty years. In that space of time, a wide range of laws and cultural norms which had explicitly targeted blacks with oppressive and unconstitutional policy have been disrupted and an array of policy changes have come to include previously disenfranchised women. That notwithstanding, there is a strong current of bias that pervades our government, its legislation and our overall state as a nation. In spite of the humanitarian and egalitarian principles which are demonstrated in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and a host of other documents which were central to explicating the philosophy of American upon its inception, the period which was to follow the Civil War would be rife with indications that the ideals of the Declaration and other documents had not been extended to include black, Native American or female citizens of the union. In Thomas Jefferson's writings, we find preemptive and outright hostility toward this extrapolation of government powers. In his defining statement, it seems apparent that he is resistant to the association established between the 'principles' stated in The Declaration of Independence and those found in the Constitution. Where the latter is endorsed by the Federalists as a watershed doctrine of civilization's history, Jefferson says of the former, "neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular or previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind." (Hoffman et al, 2001) Jefferson's assertion of a wholly organic process suggests that the philosophy found in the Declaration was perhaps endorsed by the intensity of British tyranny or by the sense of something significant coming into being on a state level. In either respect, the core principle found in his work is that the rising of individual liberties and of self-determination were inexorable. To Jefferson, the inevitable exclusions and machinations of America in the aftermath of the revolution seemed to come from a fully alternate process than that which delivered his treatise against the British. Indeed, his desire for the ascension of individual rights would seem to have subsided in the ensuing years during which the Federalist Papers would be published, with Jefferson's conception of equality ultimately subsiding to political forces less intent upon individual rights outside of a protection of the government's sovereignty. This, to the perception of the Declaration, would be an ironically close approximation to British monarchy. In line with Jefferson's ideals, Thomas Paine's Common Sense is a compelling political document from the time, as in its grievances against the tyranny of the British throne, it seems almost to anticipate the implications of an empowered American governance. He deduces that "society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our voices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions." (Hoffman et al, 2001) Quite to the point, even before America's freedom from imperial oversight, Paine demonstrates an awareness of the forces that will ultimately come to intervene with the premise of the Declaration. For the disenfranchised groups that direct our gaze in this discussion, there is an inherency to the idea that America's government, reflexive of a hegemonic political group, will ultimately undermine its social broadness. This would, in 1877, certainly be illustrated as such. Recently freed blacks continued to suffer an outrageous lot of segregation, concurrent with Paine's idea of 'distinctions,' as would Native Americans be increasingly isolated in grossly unequal reservations. More to the point, the grievances concerning representation which guided the striving for independence are clearly absent for these groups, which, including women, had no entitlement to vote or hold public office. The precedent for this arrangement is founded in the aggressive exchange and eventual compromise which were produced by the founding fathers who dedicated their intellectual energies toward deriving the Constitution. In the Federalist Papers, as James Madison argues as one speaker under the shared nom de plume, Publius, in commenting on groups rising in protest of the government that "the friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice." (Hoffman, 2001) Identifying popular objection to policy or ideology as a threat to the solidarity of the newly formulating nation, Madison represents here the over-arching impetus of The Federalist Papers. These are designed to accord the government with a protection of power but would also come to imply an entitltment that would be used to restrain the progress or equality of certain groups. The economic and cultural motives which had long driven the type of oppression to which blacks, Native Americans and women all were subjected seemed to underscore