The President of the United States should never be regarded as merely a political figurehead.  He or She should be a someone looked up to, respected as the personification of the qualities and virtues of their nation.  They should always strive to be the “glamorous” ideal to millions of young people, and the older ones too, for that matter.  Our youth should be proud to follow their leadership, and feel a certain personal cooperation with him or her in the preservation of the nation.

No other country is so plagued with divergent and warring facts as ours, where viewpoints are as varied as the climate.  Within our boundaries are gathered representatives of nearly every opinion known to the human mind.  We have more races and classes than feudal Eurpose, more castes than Asia, and more dogmas than both, while all the eccentricities that afflict us are aggravated by the pernicious illusion that we are all born free and equal.  America is made up of very opinionated people.

Each citizen feels that the payment of taxes permits him to think and do anything and the common good never enters our consciousness.  While Japan is Japanese, Russia is Russian, and Germany is German, America is only American in one common emotion- the proud sense of its sovereign right of individual initiative.   It follows, therefore that any effort to reform or organize Americans is akin to trying to organize the entire world….

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While democracy permits many of us to speak out of turn, and to speak loudest when we have nothing to say.  It is a forgone conclusion, therefore, that no matter what is recommended or what is necessary for the common good, the moment any move is made to solve a problem, someone (usually utterly selfish or incompetent) rises up in all the dignity of his sovereign right and cries: “I object! It’s unconstitutional.”

If it is unconstitutional to enforce integrity where it is evidently necessary-if it is unconstitutional to enforce ethics upon those who have forgotten the ethical bases of relationships-if it is unconstitutional to prevent a nation from exterminating itself because of utter difference to the common good, then it would seem that proper steps should be taken to revise and reshape the Constitution.

If it is unconstitutional to sacrifice some part of private privilege to common good, it would seem still more unconstitutional to support an interpretation of democracy which denies youth a chance to live useful and constructive lives.

When codes are outgrown or perverted, it is not patriotism but stupidity to offer unthinking allegiance to them.

Of the Constitution Jefferson himself wrote: “The present Constitution is well as a beginning, and may be allowed fair trial, but it is in fact only a steppingstone to something better.

Live and Learn.  We All Do.

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