Jury Duty

Disconnected Reflections While on Jury Duty

It’s not so much the waiting as it is the indeterminate nature of it,

That we have no idea how long any given period of waiting is likely to endure.

Nor does our waiting have any single place to call its own.

Doctors, at least, have “waiting rooms,”

Rooms designed to contain the waiting, to hold it in one place.

Not so the Criminal Justice Center.

Here waiting oozes slowly through granite corridors and up marbled stairways,

And we move with it: Room 101, Room 305, Room 601, Room 602…and on, and on…

We drift, we flow, we stagger in ill formed columns like drowsy, irritable sheep.

But mostly we wait.

Music seeps in occasionally,

Mostly from cell phones which we have been told to turn off.

That will be the first of many requests made of us today.

Soon we will be asked to render just judgment on our fellow man,

To set aside our passions, preconceived notions and prejudices,

To deliberate with an open mind but an independent voice,

And to responsibly deploy the immense power we will be given over the life of one of our peers.

But for now, we have just been asked to turn off our damn cell phones.

0 for 1 so far…

our supreme disgrace and our only hope...

“It ought to be noticed at this stage that the Christian doctrine, if accepted, involves a particular view of Death…On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the graves of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Lord of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call ‘ambivalent.’ It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.”

~C.S. Lewis, Miracles, HarperCollins Edition 2001, 202-203.

"What do we mean by the Revolution?"

In pondering the what and when of the American Revolution years after it was over, John Adams famously asked Thomas Jefferson, "What do we mean by the Revolution?" Answering his own question, he asserted that "The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was spilled at Lexington." Some schools of historical thought have long since come to embrace Adams's perspective. The realization that something truly revolutionary had happened, must have happened, "in the minds of the people" in order for them to willingly forsake and take up arms against the world's greatest military power is invaluable. Yet it is a mistake, one that Adams should have known better than to make, to imagine that the 'revolution' in the minds of American colonists was over by 1775. Adams's home region of New England might have been strongly, if not unanimously, convinced that a radical change in imperial relations with Britain was necessary by the time that blood was shed at Lexington, but America as a whole was still far from committed to the road to independence.

I've been reminded of this over the past week as I've read several books and articles describing the immense amount of effort exerted to move the colony of Pennsylvania into the pro-Independence camp by 1776. When John Adams arrived in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress in 1775, he found that while revolutionary sentiment was strong in New England and the South, the middle colonies were remarkably reluctant to take up the standard against Great Britain. Pennsylvania, as the most populous colony, centrally located, and home of the largest metropolis in British America, seemed to be the key; if Pennsylvania could be persuaded to vote for independence, many suspected that the other holdouts (New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware) would follow.

But colonial Pennsylvania was not a province inclined to radical change. It's population was fragmented, divided into numerous ethnic and religious groups who, long blessed by the colony's unusual level of political and religious tolerance, were not accustomed to having to conform themselves to any particular viewpoint. Furthermore, political power was largely held by the Pennsylvania Assembly, a conservative legislative body that sent delegates to the Congress with strict instructions "to dissent from and utterly reject any Proposition...that may cause, or lead to, a Separation from our Mother Country." Independents and radical-patriots had long been at work in the colony, and particularly in Philadelphia, to change the minds of the Assembly and of the people on the question of independence. They formed popular, though unofficial, committees to advocate for (and later to enforce) rules against importing or consuming British goods. They created a militia system (a novelty in the Quaker colony) to defend themselves and bring more people into their camp. They identified those they perceived as "Tories" or unfriendly to the "American cause" and, at times, persecuted them by means of questionable legality. They failed, however, to persuade the Assembly to embrace independence and in the general election of 1775 the people of Pennsylvania, with few exceptions, re-elected the same conservative members they had elected in '74; Pennsylvania continued to resist separation from Britain.

Undeterred, the pro-independence party decided that if they could not change the Assembly's mind, they must change the Assembly itself. For years it had been known that the Assembly, always slow to adjust to changes in population, gave less than equal representation to the western and northern counties and to the city of Philadelphia. Believing that the these were strongholds of pro-Independence sentiment, the Committee of the City of Philadelphia demanded that additional Assembly seats be allocated to the backcountry and the city. The Assembly, fearing that the mass committees were rapidly taking control of the province, acquiesced and created seventeen new seats for Philadelphia and the western counties. The Independent's victory turned to ashes, however, when three of the four new Assemblymen chosen by Philadelphia opposed separation from Britain. The results from the western counties were likewise mixed, and the newly enlarged Assembly merely reiterated its stance against declaring independence.

And so we return to John Adams who, attending the Congress in Philadelphia and personally devoted to severing America's political ties with Britain, watched these happenings with dismay. Supported by other pro-independence delegates to the congress and radical leaders in Pennsylvania, Adams decided that if the government of Pennsylvania and the other holdout colonies could not be brought to support the cause, then those governments must be overthrown. On May 10, Adams helped introduce a resolve into Congress calling on all colonies which lacked  a "government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs" (meaning, to Adams, a government unwilling to vote for independence) to replace them with new, more "sufficient" governments. To the surprise of Adams and his pro-independence allies, the resolution was passed unanimously. Even John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania delegate who strongly opposed independence, supported the measure, pointing out that Pennsylvania's government was running along quite smoothly and seemed perfectly capable, as far as running the province was concerned, despite its opposition to independence. Others agreed with Dickinson's interpretation, and once again, it seemed that the hopes for winning Pennsylvania's vote in the Congress had been dashed.

But Adams refused to give up. Given the task of creating a preamble explaining the purpose of the May 10 resolution, he was determined to make it apply to Pennsylvania one way or another. The resulting preamble explained that, in light of the actions of King George III against the colonies, "it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed." In short, any government established under royal authority was to be shut down. This unambiguously applied to the Pennsylvania Assembly which, in theory, derived its authority from the monarch. It also called into question the legitimacy of several pro-Independence votes in the Congress, but this was generally ignored. Whereas the May 10 resolution had passed unanimously, Adams's preamble provoked a stormy debate before it was put to the vote on May 15. The middle colonies, at which the resolution was ostensibly aimed, all either voted against the preamble or abstained, calling it a defacto declaration of independence, but they were outvoted by New England and the South. Adams himself fully recognized the importance of what he had accomplished, calling it "the most important Resolution that ever was taken in America." Following the vote, the Maryland delegation packed their bags and departed, stating that they would not return until they had had time to consult with those at home "upon this alarming situation."

Pennsylvania was immediately embroiled in a political battle, centered in Philadelphia, over the legitimacy of Congress's resolution, the need to form a new government, and how that government should be created. Thousands gathered in mass meetings in the city, either calling for or rejecting a Provincial Convention which would decide how a new provincial constitution should be created. Both sides crafted letters and petitions to be sent out to the backcountry for support, but the Independents, who tended to dominate the committees and militias throughout the colony, were better organized. Supporters of the old Assembly who took their party's petitions to the western counties were intercepted along the way or upon arrival. Some had their papers confiscated, others were 'strongly encouraged' to turn around and ride back Philadelphia. They nonetheless obtained thousands of signatures in support of the existing Assembly, but events were turning against them. By June 8, the Assembly realized that its place as the governing authority of Pennsylvania was endangered. In a desperate bid to win over radical support it sent new instructions to the Pennsylvania delegates in the Continental Congress, freeing them to vote for or against independence as they saw fit. In the end, it wouldn't matter.

A Provincial Convention, made up of delegates from the various Pennsylvania committees, met on June 18. They decided that a constitutional convention should be called in order to draft a new form of government. But remembering how badly the election of May 1 had gone for the pro-Independence party, they decided to stack the odds in their favor when it came to electing delegates to this new convention. The normal franchise requirements would be imposed on potential voters with three exceptions: militia members over 21 would get special treatment and be exempt from some of the property requirements, anyone who wished to vote could be required to swear an oath renouncing the king of Great Britain and promising to support any government established by the Continental Congress, and anyone who the committees had previously declared an 'enemy of this country' (a label liberally applied to those who, for example, "damned Congress") was forbidden from casting a ballot. These provisions guaranteed that the pro-independence and radical factions would dominate the constitutional convention, and so they did. 

By early July it was clear that Pennsylvania was moving, or being moved, into the independence camp. Several members of the province's delegation to the Continental Congress, John Dickinson among them, recognized the futility to continued resistance. Yet still unwilling to vote for separation from Britain, Dickinson simply abstained and let the more revolutionary members of the delegation decide the fate of the colony. On July 2, Pennsylvania voted for independence and the United States officially severed their political ties with Great Britain. The following day Adams wrote to his wife that "The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival....It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more." He rightly considered himself to be one of the major figures involved in bringing that "memorable epoch" about. In years to come it would be an annual irritant for him that the nation adopted as its grand anniversary, not the 2nd, but the 4th of July, when Congress approved the famed Declaration laying out the justification for the separation from Britain, and that it was Jefferson whose name came to be most closely associated with that day.

Pennsylvania would wrestle with the aftermath of the turmoil of '76 for years to come. The new constitution remembered variously as the most "liberal", "radical" or "democratic" of the new state constitutions, would be wildly controversial and face constant opposition until it was finally replaced in 1790. Most Pennsylvanians, regardless of their original views of independence, would eventually reconcile themselves to separation from Britain, but there were thousands who would not. Some sold their property, packed their bags and departed voluntarily. Others were chased out by angry mobs and a new government that tolerated little dissent. Some were imprisoned and deported; a very few were executed. Many more flooded into Philadelphia when the British Army occupied the city in 1777, departing with them in 1778 to take up new lives in Canada, Britain, the Caribbean or other ports still loyal to the empire.

The "minds of the people" would remain flexible throughout the war, and men like Adams's labored diligently to mold them into conformance with their visions of America's future, at times employing some questionable tactics. In remembering the Revolution, we would do well to avoid Adams's somewhat self-serving claim that the crucial transformation in the American mind was complete by '75. The line between 'patriot' and 'loyalist,' between British and 'American', remained blurry long after Lexington and Concord. Like so many conflicts, both past and present, the American Revolution was gray at its center, despite the attempts of activists on either side to cast it as black and white.

 

Brunhouse, Robert Levere. The Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1776-1790. Harrisburg:  Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1942. 

Hawke, David. In the Midst of a Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961.

Ousterhout, Anne M. A State Divided: Opposition in Pennsylvania to the American Revolution. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1987. 

Rosswurm, Steven. Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and "lower Sort" During the American Revolution, 1775-1783. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.  

Ryerson, Richard Alan. The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765-1776. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978. 

Subjects, Citizens, and Smudges

Independence Day in America commemorates the political separation of what is now the United States from the empire of Great Britain. More than just a change in nationality, the transition altered the fundamental political identity of [white, male] Americans: they ceased to be the subjects of a monarch, subservient to the authority of a hereditary ruler theoretically ordained by God, and became the citizens of a republic, themselves the source of supreme political authority. It was an important historical moment, and it was captured perfectly in an inky smudge Thomas Jefferson made in writing the Declaration of Independence. 

The Declaration was composed by such famous luminaries as Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin, along with the less well known Robert "that-other-guy" Livingston and Rodger "him-too" Sherman. Though there's no reliable record of who contributed each item to the document (Adams and Jefferson offer contradicting accounts in their memoirs), we know that Jefferson did the actual writing and was probably responsible for most of the diction. One day in June of 1776, as his pen furiously scratched out phrases denouncing the various tyrannies of King George, Jefferson wrote,

"He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow subjects..."

And then, presumably, he stopped. And he stared for a moment at that last word, "subjects." And then, in a beautifully illustrative moment, he smudged it out and wrote "citizens" instead. Notably, Jefferson didn't simply cross out the word "subjects", as he had done with other errors in the document, he attempted to annihilate it. As closely as he could, he wrote out the letters of 'citizens' so that they overlapped and further obscured the letters of his earlier mistake. And he hoped that no one would know that he, Thomas Jefferson, on the eve of American Independence, could still think of himself as a subject. In all probability, no one did....until now.

Science is a marvelous thing. Through science we've cured horrible diseases, we've learned how all the foods  we love are slowly killing us, we've discovered that pigeons can recognize themselves on TV, and now we can nosily delve into the mind of Thomas Jefferson. Researchers at the Library of Congress recently figured out how to read through the smudge and decipher the word "subjects" hidden under "citizens". The ink in the original word has a slightly different chemical signature than the word written over top of it. By studying the document under different wave-lengths of light, the researchers were able to read what Jefferson had hoped to forever blot out.

(Picture from the NY Daily News)

Interestingly, you won't find that phrase about the king inciting fellow subjects/citizens in the official Declaration. It was one of the many phrases the Continental Congress ordered removed from Jefferson's draft before they accepted it. They apparently decided that, being in the midst of inciting a "treasonable insurrection" themselves, it was best not to cast that particular first stone.

"I’m begging you"

What do you do when you’re approached by a stranger on the street asking for money? They say they need a few dollars for a meal, or a cold drink, or train ticket. Sometimes their requests are simple and lack enthusiasm: a man asks, without explanation and in a mumbled voice, if you can spare some change, his eyes already looking for the next person to petition once you pass him by. Sometimes they are more intense, telling desperate, often implausible, but always emotional stories of misfortune, like the woman I encountered last week who asked for a few dollars for a bus ticket that would let her escape her abusive boyfriend. “Please,” she said, after telling me her story, “please…I’m begging you…I’m begging you…please.” What do you do?

I’ve developed several responses. The simplest and the most common, is to do nothing. Oh, sometimes I’ll give a little shrug, or shake my head and mutter “sorry” (though it’s never quite clear what it is I’m sorry for) and move along, my velocity undiminished. Far too often, I fix my gaze in front me and I walk past without even turning my head. It’s an incredibly dehumanizing thing to pretend that someone doesn’t even exist, and yet I’ve done it many times.

On the other hand, I can give in to their requests. A couple dollars every so often is, in all honesty, trivial. If I yielded to every panhandler I met on the street, my total outlay might amount to $20 per month: a Netflix membership. Strangely enough, I find that the choice to give money is actually more selfish than the choice not to. I know that handing out cash to beggars on the street is more likely to further self-destructive habits than to address real needs. The primary benefit is to me: I feel slightly less light a heartless, bourgeois bastard. A slightly better plan is to directly purchase what the beggar says he needs: a meal, a cold drink, a bus fair, etc. This takes a little more time and might actually count as a ‘good deed,’ but looking inward I find that the motivation is still profoundly selfish; I’m merely trying to avoid the guilt of being stingy and the guilt of furthering someone else’s self-destructive habits. I don’t truly care, or at least I care very little, about the needs of the beggar.

I was deeply moved by my encountered with the woman who wanted money for a bus ticket. Rarely has someone said to me “I’m begging you” and meant it literally. Since then, I’ve been pondering what the proper response was. It’s so easy for me to limit the alternatives to either giving the beggar what he wants or not giving him anything. The problem is that neither of these responses actually helps him in any meaningful way and both of them are designed to serve my own interests, either by avoiding guilt or by avoiding an uncomfortable situation. There is, of course, a third option: I could actually try to help the person asking me for help.

The woman who was “begging” me was obviously lying about her situation (her story was incredible and key details kept changing), but just as obviously she was a woman in need of help. She was ragged, dirty, and marked by bruises and small cuts, the latter quite possibly self-inflicted. She may not have needed a bus ticket, but there can be no doubt that this was a person whose life was in serious distress. In all likelihood, there was nothing I could have done in that moment to help ease the deeper sufferings in her life. But I could have tried to listen to her, to find out what those deeper issues were, because though I might lack the power to help her, others do not. Our home city houses a wide variety of shelters, missions, and programs available to those suffering from addiction, unemployment, depression, neurosis, and abuse. I could, at the very least, have pointed her in the right direction. Whether she accepted it or not, that would have been an attempt to truly help her. As it was, I doubtless gave the impression that I didn’t really consider or care what her true struggles might be…because I didn’t. I should have.

So how can I do better? How can I actually help the people who ask me for help? Well, first I can change my priorities, giving precedence to their needs over my own comfort and guilt. I can be willing to share my time with those who approach me, to focus on finding out how I can help them rather than on how I can get away as quickly as possible. Second, I can learn what sorts of resources exist to provide meaningful help to those in distress. I know the parts of the city in which I’m mostly likely to encounter someone asking me for money. A little research will teach me which shelters and outreaches exist there, who they serve, and how to reach them. This is all information I should have available when I can expect to be petitioned for help. And finally, I can be ready to offer the other sort of help I have. I carry a message of mercy, grace, hope and salvation which all people need but which the poor and distressed are often most willing to hear. I should be ready to share that as well.

Yet even if I am prepared, there are still more difficulties. I cannot always stop to spend time with the needy. I have responsibilities to colleagues and family members, responsibilities to keep my word about when I’ll be a certain places, and the duties attendant with work and school that mean I must be diligent about completing the tasks set out for me. But there are times when I can stop, when I can try to help without betraying my commitments to others, and at those times I should. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that if I can learn about the resources that exist to aid the needy, so can they. That they are still begging on the street may mean that they have little interest in these services and thus little interest in what I can offer other than money. I should be prepared to accept that to, to be rejected even by the one asking for help.

To tell the truth, this plan scares me. I am uncomfortable and afraid around the very poor, even around those who aren’t asking me for anything. I prefer to be merciful and generous from the distance of an organized charity and a checkbook. I should, no doubt, think less about my own comfort and more about others.

“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35-36)

“Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” (Matthew 5:42)

To infinity...

Once again, Pixar has proven itself to be the master of animated pathos. Staggering out of the theatre today after undergoing the sound emotional drubbing that is Toy Story 3, I was surprised anew at how deeply I can be made to care for, to emotionally connect with, an animated character (and a plastic-faced cowboy toy, at that). It's a wonderful movie: a deeply satisfying conclusion to the story of Woody, Buzz and Andy. It's clever and funny and engrossing throughout and you should see it. Just don't plan on doing anything mentally or emotionally strenuous immediately afterward...we came home and had ice-cream.

This is hardly the first time Pixar has managed to unexpectedly play on my heart-strings. WALL-E (2008) was, for me, the first entirely computer generated character who I found that I really cared about by the end of the movie, which is remarkable since he was a robot. Up (2009) achieved something similar just in laying out the back story for the main plot, telling an incredibly moving and tragic story of friendship, love, dreams, disappointments, death and loneliness that could make your eyes glisten, all in the first 20 minutes of the movie. But Toy Story 3 had more to work with than either of these movies. These are characters we know; characters we first met in 1995 in the original Toy Story (yep, it really has been 15 years); we need to know it turns out OK for them in the end.

More so than the previous installments in the series, Toy Story 3 touches on deep and serious themes. Toy Story 2 brought up issues of trust, friendship, loyalty, and abandonment. The new movie engages with all those issues (if anything more so than the last one) but also tells a 'coming of age' story and looks at the inevitability of change and loss as well as, in its own way, the problems of immortality.  It manages, at different times, to be laugh-out-loud funny, immensely tragic, truly scary, and  thoughtfully contemplative. All of this is still wrapped in a kid's story about childrens' toys, but there's no missing the deeper themes if you're an adult. The plot is especially poignant for those (myself included) who were children when the first movie came out and have, like Andy, grown up since then. Toy Story 3 captures the bitter-sweetness inherent in letting go of the past, in moving on to different phases of life, by showing how one boy's past tries to let go of him and to move on, itself, to new things. It's really quite brilliant in its way.

As we left the theatre and drove home, we talked about whether or not it was a movie we'd recommend for kids. There's a lot of stuff that's quite scary, both in the creepy sense and the fear-of-betrayal-or-abandonment sense. There are numerous close calls and last-minute saves in life threatening situations. And of course that's all on top of the other emotionally draining issues the film wrestles with. In the end, though, we just weren't sure how much of it young kids would actually pick up on. There were plenty of them in the theatre with us and they all seemed to be fine at the end: it was only the adults who left with tear-streaked faces. In the end, I guess it all comes down to the temperament of the individual kid, though I think I'd avoid taking very small children simply because of the intensity of some of the scary scenes. In my opinion, while many kids will doubtless enjoy it, Toy Story 3, like several of Pixar's more recent films, is really meant for adults, and especially for people who went to see the original Toy Story in the theatre 15 years ago. It's a terrific movie, and if I were going to introduce a rating system in this blog (which I'm not), I would no doubt rate it highly.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Here’s something interesting. In the 1790s and the first years of the 1800s, women in the New Jersey could vote. Not all women, of course, but then not all men either; property requirements were still in effect (a fact which excluded all married women, since technically all their property belonged to their husbands). Nonetheless, in New Jersey, and only in New Jersey, some women legally could, and did, vote and have their votes counted.

The special thing about New Jersey was the word “inhabitants.” Whereas all other state constitutions specified that their franchise was limited to men, New Jersey’s 1776 state constitution left the word “inhabitants” unqualified by gender in declaring that “all inhabitants of this Colony…shall be entitled to vote….” There’s some debate as to whether or not this constitutional aberration was intentional, and in 1807 the New Jersey legislature brought the state in line with the national norm by clarifying that, from thence forth, “inhabitants” meant “white men.” For about thirty years, however, women had the vote and took advantage of it (occasionally over and over again in a single election, but that’s another story). However, that’s not what’s so interesting.

What’s interesting is that, in many of the American colonies before the Revolution, the language dictating who could and could not vote was just as gender-neutral as New Jersey’s became in 1776. And yet, except for a very few individual incidents, women did not vote. That’s not to say that they could not vote; it’s to say that the question of whether or not they could never came up. The idea of a woman voting was, for most colonists, literally unthinkable. It was so unheard of, so far “out there,” that it hardly occurred to anyone to forbid it. Hence the absence of gendered specificity in the franchise requirements of so many colonies.

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies hosted a round-table discussion last night on Rosemarie Zagarri’s book Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early Republic, which makes reference to the brief period of women’s franchise in New Jersey. I bring it up here because it reminded me of an intriguing truth: some the greatest transitions in history have involved shifts, not in what people did or even what they thought they should do, but in what they imagined was possible.  It’s one thing to believe quite strongly that only men should be allowed to vote. It’s something else to have never even considered the possibility of a woman voting.

There’s a certain kind of blissful ignorance in the unthinkable. The man (or woman, for that matter) who has never really imagined the possibility of a female franchise is certainly nonetheless a narrow-minded sexist. But he is a sexist without the passion, without the twisted, derogatory logic and chauvinistic arguments that are so integral to maintaining a conscious bigotry. He’s also, in his own way, singularly immune to change. You cannot reason with someone who finds your argument so outlandish as to dismiss it out-of-hand or finds it so absurd as to view it as hysterical. An idea first has to be taken seriously, to enter the realm of true contemplation, before it can ever possibly become convincing.

In the view of some historians, and I’ll hesitantly place myself among them, one of the most dramatic effects of the American (and later the French) Revolution was to make the previously unimaginable imaginable. The rhetoric of equality and liberty, hardly new, was deployed so liberally and repeatedly that people, some for the first time, began to seriously think about what it meant for all people to be “created equal.” The effects were not always laudable; after all, once the idea occurred to them, all the new states except for New Jersey simply added explicit prohibitions against women voting. But it was a first, and necessary, step. The idea of human equality had to work its way into the minds of the people, even if it would be centuries before they actually started to think it was a good idea.

If it’s difficult to imagine the idea of women voting being truly unthinkable in the early 1700s, we might set it alongside some other once ‘unthinkable’ ideas. The idea that slavery is a terrible evil is a notion that, at various times for various societies, has been outside the realm of serious contemplation. Before about 1750, you find precious little evidence of anyone even raising the possibility, and it isn’t until the 1800s that anyone really bothered to develop coherent counter-arguments in favor of slavery. Such things simply weren’t needed before.

More recently there’s the issue of moral-vegetarianism and animal rights. There was a time in my own life when it had never even occurred to me that eating a hamburger might be an act comparable with murder. It’s a concept which, I think, still lingers on the fringe of the seriously imaginable in American society. If moral-vegetarianism is ever to really take hold in America, we will first have to reach a point at we seriously contemplate why it is that we think it’s OK to kill and devour other animals and then ask ourselves if those reasons are logical and consistent. Thus far, those sorts of questions have very little common currency. We’re still far more pre-occupied with other quandaries, like “Do I want fries with that?”