By Franz Schurmann

---

Prediction #49 for Tuesday, February 29th, 2000

Sometime during the next U.S. presidential term the White House will form a commission to consider major revisions in the Constitution or even writing a new one.

In 1776 thirteen colonies declared their separation from the British crown and parliament. In 1781 they gained victory over the British and declared themselves a confederation. In 1788 the new American Constitution was ratified by the new thirteen states. From that time till now the Constitution has been amended but never rewritten.

It is now the oldest of all the national constitutions in the world. In fact, its age makes it more similar to the sacred books of the great religions than to the other national constitutions. Great power and wisdom come from the sacred books because they are never rewritten.

Great religions have great staying power. Sometimes in history they have too much. Revolutions then arise against them. Some revolutions make great changes but then restore the sacred books in new form. The Protestant Reformation rose up against the Roman Catholic Church through the vernacular Bible. The French Revolution overthrew the Church but Napoleon quickly restored it. The Russian Revolution overthrew the Orthodox Church but three-quarters of a century later it was restored.

The American Constitution has the staying power of great religions. But it also has the capacity to keep changing, as is the case with shorter-lasting constitutions based on jurisprudence. Then why change it?

History everywhere -- in the world's east, west, north or south -- shows a long list of great upheavals that were eventually followed by restoration. It wasn't enough just to add more amendments. The old order had to be shaken up. But as the upheavals did their work the sacred books of the old order returned. This is why many historians, when asked what history is, reply: change and continuity.

So the question I'm raising is whether something is so out of order in the USA that at least many amendments have to be made in the Constitution or, maybe, the Constitution itself has to be rewritten.

That the world is now going through some immense changes is well known. But if all change also has continuity then history is a flow that, like a river, has an upstream, downstream and a here-and-now stream. The following argument assumes there is a flow to American history.

In 1776 Americans changed their identity that had come from subjection to the king and parliament of Great Britain. The Confederation set up in 1781 gave them no new identity but the Constitution of 1788 did. During the colonial period the colonials, mostly of British descent, called themselves Americans. The Declaration of Independence gave them a political identity through the new name United States of America. Then the Constitution expanded and strengthened that identity. It equated the USA with America (USA = America). America is the country where Americans live and have rights as well as obligations. Thus the USA (a political concept) belongs to Americans (a social concept) and Americans belong to the USA.

During the Civil War Southerners challenged the first but not the second part of the equation. They called themselves the "Confederate States of America." They still regarded themselves as Americans (as do most people in Latin America) but rejected the Constitution's equating of USA and America.

But from 1865 till now the equation has stood. Can it continue to stand?

In the last century Europeans coined the term "nation-state." The term means that every nation should have an independent government. And a nation is defined as a group of people who share certain essential characteristics peculiar to them alone. In Europe the main essential characteristic was common language. In America it became skin color.

In Europe many independent nations had and still have historical pockets of different peoples. After the peace settlements following World War I they were called minorities. After World War II the word minority became prominent in America. In Europe government promised equal civil rights to their minorities. So did government in America during the 1960's.

But in America the efforts went farther than in Europe. The minorities were promised membership in the American nation in addition to gaining equal civil rights within the USA. In Europe most minorities were promised, at most, equal civil rights but never admission into the dominant nation.

What about America? In 1968 the Kerner Commission concluded America remains a divided nation. On Sunday, February 26, 2000, President Clinton said the same in the aftermath of the Diallo trial acquittal. A divided nation cannot be a nation-state.

During the American Civil War Confederate president Jefferson Davis offered President Lincoln a co-existence similar to that now offered by Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui to China: "one nation, two states." And like now in the case of China, Lincoln rejected the offer.

Yet what happened in the USA subsequently was that the white rebels were accepted as full Americans while the emancipated black slaves along with others of non-white skin color were rejected.

Demographic projections indicate that before the middle of this century whites will no longer be this country's majority population. This means that while the new majority may enjoy full civil rights as citizens of the USA they will still face walls, ceilings and exclusion from the former white majority.

This situation is not so different from the condition of minorities in Europe. Under the best circumstances they may enjoy full civil rights but, as Turks in Germany know well, they face walls, ceilings and exclusion everywhere.

If in the equation USA = America the America side is a wobbly entity so also is the USA side. In this country US and USA mean the same thing so the equation could also read US = America. No secession menaces challenge the US but something else does, globalism.

The suffix "ism" implies an ideology. So globalism means an idea driven by the will of many people to link things together into operative globe-spanning systems. Several domains can be named where the linkages are now at a point where they form operative systems: technology, money, science and mathematics, aerospace travel and commerce, language (English and mathematics), culture (which I define as the ways people live, work and think together) and, lastly and the most important communication, especially the Internet.

Every one of these operative systems now already plays an important part in the everyday life lived every day of most people in the world. There are few people left in the world who do not use money to buy daily goods and services many of which come from way beyond the periphery of residence.

That being the case the political power to make decisions about these systems no longer fully resides in any nation-state, including one so great and powerful as the US. Try a thought experiment. Write on two adjacent blackboards a list of the politically significant powers held by the US and another of the powers held by all the other states together. The two lists, quantitatively, would not be so different.

The US is vulnerable in every one of the aforementioned domains.

*If other countries do not import US high-tech communication products the US high-tech dependent economy will be in deep trouble.

*If the yen and the euro/mark don't work together with the dollar the latter and the US will be in deep trouble.

*If the US cannot import foreign brain power, especially from India and China, US science and math will be in deep trouble.

*As an example, if Hollywood can't make films in low-wage countries and then sell them back to those countries for substantial profits the US will be in deep trouble.

*And if the US can't sell vast numbers of communication products to China because Congress loves Taiwan and hates China's human rights violations then the US will be in deep trouble.

And, of course, I haven't even mentioned the threat from an angry and resurgent Russia or the unstoppable spread of militant Islam over so many of the oil producing regions in the world on which the US is more dependent than ever before.

If this second part of my argument also holds up then the equation US = America is wobbly on both sides. Sometimes in mathematics the left side is called the "dependent variable" and the right side the "independent variable." That means the "US" won't wobble unless the "America" wobbles. Or one can reverse the order and write America = US. So the globe-spanning America will only wobble if the US wobbles.

Unfortunately my argument suggests that both sides of the equation are independent variables.

So what is the remedy?

Pat Buchanan, whose name has dropped out of the news, says lets bring back the old equation USA = America and defend ourselves with every weapon we have.

For the moment his voice has dropped away from the microphones. The other candidates have largely accepted Clinton's globalism. An example indicates this. All the major candidates support China's entry into the WTO.

But the list of the explosive issues they all leave out of their speeches would be much longer than the one's above. They don't talk of the new dangers coming from a seething Russia. Jimmy Carter warns of unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons. Fears of war between India and Pakistan are growing. The US may have given itself a new Vietnam with its expanding military role in Colombia. And finally there is a new truculence coming from Europe prompted more by fear and envy than ambition.

If foreign dangers were the only threat to America then changing or rewriting of the Constitution might not be needed. But, as stated, America is still bedeviled by serious skin color divisions. Nothing fundamental has changed in America's and the USA's race relations since whites first came here. They were soon followed by black slaves whose descendants are still spurned by the dominant white race. Whites fought with Indians to gain control over their lands. And the final results were not that different from the genocidal actions of Hitler and Stalin.

But there is a final reason America's Constitution will come up for renewed scrutiny. Hints of this reason are evident in the increasing number of films, books, fantasies and so on that are about galactic empires or real historic ones like those of Rome and China. America is an empire and there is no point in denying it. Romans were great road builders and the Chinese were great canal diggers. America's roads and canals are now melded into one huge transportation system: global aeronautic travel and commerce.

An indication of what is to come can be found in the latter years of the Roman Republic and the early years of the Roman Empire (the first centuries BCE and CE). Before these two centuries Rome was governed by its Civil Law (jus civilis). Civil Law rested on the assumption that all its citizens were either Roman or kindred peoples. But when Roman power spread all over the Mediterranean lands the Roman rulers found themselves surrounded and outnumbered by "foreigners." Gradually a parallel system of law arose called the Law of Nations (jus gentium). As the Empire grew and spread the two legal systems wove in and out of each other.

America and the USA are now also woven into each other. The current Constitution is like the Roman Civil Law. Change has to come and will come.