Gold rush refers to miners rushing to a new discovery of gold. It seems there were times when land ownership and government regulations were lose and miners went to dig gold at new places of discovery in order to make wealth. One example is the California Gold Rush around 1850. During that time, ships brought miners from New York to San Francisco by cutting the travel time from about seven months to four months.
Before major gold rushes occurred in the 19th century, there was what I would like to call here knowledge rush.
A Roman poet and philosopher called Lucretius wrote a poem titled De Rerum Natura (in Latin, which means On the Nature of Things) in the first century BC.
The poem was rediscovered in the 15th century. I remember reading in the book titled "The Swerve: How The World Became Modern" that the person who was interested in the poem by Lucretius traveled a long distance in Europe to get a copy of it.
The Swerve also documents that Thomas Jefferson studied De Rerum Natura or its translation closely and incorporated it into the Constitution of the United States. It has been also noted that Thomas Jefferson sought knowledge so much so that some of his friends even referred to him as a closet Muslim.
I imagine that the long distance travel in Europe in the 15th century in order to get a copy of a poem that was written in the first century BC and Thomas Jefferson's pursuit of knowledge to the extent that even his friends referred to him as a closet Muslim may be viewed as exemplars for knowledge rush.
In the recent debate about the checks and balances in the U.S. constitution, the depth of knowledge of its framers became alive as did the depth of knowledge of the debaters about it.
I also imagine that the rich constitution about checks and balances did not come out of the blue. Even though I have a limited knowledge about its foundation, it wouldn't be far fetched to presume that it falls in the trajectory of renaissance movement in Europe, which has its own history. It suffices to say here that that movement had knowledge rush of its kind.
Given the history of medieval anarchy and renaissance movement in Europe in the background, it wouldn't be surprising that the framers of the checks and balances in the Constitution of the United States would envisage to make it as solid and timeless as it can be into the future. It wouldn't be surprising if they envisaged to never repeat the wild west of the medieval period even as they had the capacity to exclude others from the republic that they sought to establish.
In my view, in the recent debate, many appeared to be reincarnations of the framers while some others appeared false or ignorant preachers about the constitution. In a sense, it appeared to me as if the debate became between literates and illiterates when it comes to constitutional governance.
Checks and balances is about the separation of powers between three branches of government. In that sense, there are three highest offices in the land, which are Capitol Hill, Oval Office, and Supreme Court. Some people mistakenly or unwittingly call the office of only one of the branches the highest office in the land. When only one of the branches becomes the highest branch, or office, in the land, the meaning of checks and balances ceases to exist.
When the Constitution states that one branch has the sole power for a certain provision, it means it is independent of the other two branches in order to exercise that provision exclusively and democratically.
It has been noted that the phrase sole power appears in the constitution only twice and I haven't found the phrase sober moment in it. I haven't noticed a moment that suggested any division among the debaters on the fundamental nature of the constitution. If this is a well founded observation, then when all debaters are united on the fundamental nature of the constitution, the suggestion of a divided country about an exercise of a provision in the constitution appears to highlight the gap in understanding the constitution as it was framed then and as it is exercised today. Shockingly, some even tried to suggest a dereliction of duty today in interpreting and exercising the constitution in order to win in the future a continued opportunity in the same position.
Following a lengthy debate, the House of Representatives, the branch of government that has the sole power to impeach, has reached a decision on December 18, 2019. The Senate is the branch of government that has the sole power to acquit or find guilty as charged and remove the President from office. Paradoxically, even before the Senate trial started, its top leaders, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and its Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, have gone out of their way to suggest that they are not impartial or fair jurors.
The quest for fairness is the genesis of civility and hence civilization. It goes without saying that fairness is the very foundation of checks and balances in the Constitution of the United States. The charge is against someone whom a special counsel stated that he didn't have the confidence to exonerate. The same person has failed to respond to subpoenas from the branch of government that has the sole power to impeach him. He has also gone all the way to the Supreme Count of the land in order to get his tax records blocked from public sight.
By publicly stating that they can't be impartial or fair jurors, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham have emerged as the poster boys of the wild west instead of Senate leaders and keepers of the Constitution of the United States as framed by its founding fathers. By taking the positions of partiality and unfairness, they are posing to consign the Senate that they are leading to a rubber stamp collection.
So, what is the source of the gap between the Constitution and understanding of the constitution?
I do not think that it is unfair to say that the U.S. in the past has been the country that the brightest students from around the world wished to rush to for knowledge. This phase of rush for knowledge appears to have become alive during this constitutional debate.
It has also become a country where the richest billionaire in the world is a college drop out, presumably in a rush for money.
I can imagine that at the time of the initial writing of the Constitution of the United States, the correlation between knowledge and wealth might have been strong. Today, the best professors, including those with the best knowledge about the constitution, are probably not the billionaires. I am not being critical of those with healthy wealth. I am just wondering how the correlation between wealth and knowledge at the time of the initial writing of the constitution and today compare.
In the final analysis, if the rush for money gets in the way of the rush for knowledge, it degrades societal values.