BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY - BLUE JERSEY, JAY LASSITER & THE NATTERING NABOBS OF NEGATIVITY

For the last five days, urban, suburban and rural Americans have been practicing the rituals associated with the founding of the nation. The Fourth of July is a time for parades, barbeques and fireworks. Time at the shore or lake. Stories honoring the troops in Iraq, movies about Patriot troops and militias battling British regulars and mercenaries. And, underling it all, sprinkled throughout the mix, a flow of deferential remarks about the Declaration of Independence and reverent speeches about the Constitution parse the Holiday conversations. Homage is paid to the blessings of being an American and the need for the vigilance necessary to perpetuate these good things.

In keeping with the spirit and basis for the holiday it is appropriate and necessary to take a moment to ask what are we celebrating? What are we fighting for? What do these documents mandate and what resultant way of life do we truly value?

Central to both the act of governing and the check and balances of the people on its government are the “nattering nabobs of negativity.” Since our inception, from the time of Publius and the Pennsylvania Farmer through the Pentagon Papers to the Abu Ghraib photos, reports of wireless wiretapping, and the U.S. Attorney scandal, the press, in all its forms and machinations, for all the criticism and its faults, has somehow continued to stir the pot and defend the right of the people to know. In doing so the press facilitates the right of the people to make informed judgments about their government and their right to be heard. Their right to say “enough.” So in that quite moment of reflection on this day cherish the irreverence of Thomas Nast, be thankful for papers like the New York Times, defend the right of the Don Imuses and Ann Coulters to make outrageous remarks, and be comforted by the taking-up of the torch by a new generation of nattering nabobs like BlueJersey’s Jay Lassiter.

SUPPLEMENTAL BACKGOUND

Our politicians talk endlessly about the “freedom of the people” and “the people’s exercise of liberty” in the pursuit of individual happiness. So far so good. But let’s take it one step further. It seems to go without saying that without the Bill of Rights there would be no Constitution and the Declaration of Independence would be nothing more than a failed articulation of human aspirations.

The Constitution recognizes three independent branches of Government: (1) the congress that makes the laws of the land, (2) the executive who implements the laws of Congress, and (3) judiciary that resolves disputes arising from the laws and their implementation. The Anti-federalists, however, saw the establishment of the horizontal machinery of Government as necessary but not sufficient because it did not provide vertical checks and balances. It did not formalize the vertical relationship between the first three branches of government and the fourth, the people. Thus the Bill of Rights was created as a mechanism to insure the government did not usurp the power of the people and suppress the legitimate role of the people in their own governance. It was created to require the government control itself.

The New Jersey Constitution, whether by incorporation or declaration, is a cut of the same cloth. It is a product of the same concerns.