I am continually exasperated with the fuzzy thinking that passes as profound erudition in the Mustang Daily. But when interim provost Robert C. Detweiler is quoted in the October 12 article “First Constitution Day Coming” as saying, “I don’t have a lot of patience with those who say we can only look at the original version and the original intent (of the Constitution) because we just can’t know,” a new drivel surpassed the pale.
Oh, yes scholar Detweiler, how insightful! Why, I suppose we could never know any author’s intent throughout history. We can’t really know what Herodotus meant to convey in his history of the Persians and Greeks. We can only guess at Tacitus’s biographies of Vespasian and Claudius. For all we know, Vespasian and Claudius may be fictional epic characters of Roman poetry. Oh, and Newton really didn’t mean to elicit physics with his Three Laws of Motion.
Poppycock! Balderdash! Hogwash! The Framers clearly structured the federal government within the first three articles. The subsequent Bill of Rights elucidated the rights of people: freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, possession of arms, right to trial by jury, etc. The truth is that truth exists. Just because time passes, does not mean truth vanishes. If all WWII veterans were to die tomorrow, WWII as an historic event would still exist. The crux of the problem is that the hearts of men seek to twist truth in order to slake their own lusts. Nice try, but you didn’t pull the wool over this Poly students’ eyes.
Joel Ashby
Construction management senior