What recent weighty topics have my attention? Of course the sequester does, but I’m also intrigued by the Georgia state representatives who want to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If passed, it will allow state legislatures to elect U.S. senators. A co-signer of the House resolution said electing senators the way it was done pre-17th Amendment is what James Madison intended.
Bless your hearts guys, but I know a power grab when I see one.
Maybe no Founding Father foresaw corruption, or the possibility that interest groups could buy state legislators, and therefore buy senators. Maybe the Fathers expected men’s higher angels to prevail. But human nature and greed prevailed, hence the need for an amendment so our senators can be elected by popular vote.
Georgia politicians aren’t the only ones who want a return to the past. Other state legislatures have expressed an interest in the repeal. I’ll leave it to local voters to pass judgment on whether this move to take a step backwards reflects their will.
Speaking of amendments and the past, a professor at Ole Miss saw the movie “Lincoln” and discovered that Mississippi, the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment banning slavery, didn’t make it official. Its 1995 ratification wasn’t sent to the Office of the Federal Register until Feb. 7 of this year, one 148 years after its adoption. Color me skeptical. I have to wonder whether the omission was tardiness or passive aggression.
I’m interested in trivia and quirky historical facts. That’s why I like to watch “Jeopardy.” My grandchildren laughed when I told them the television of my youth only had three networks and three channels. Mother would come home from her job teaching special needs children and watch her favorite television program, “Queen for a Day.”
You have to be of a certain age to remember the popular 1950s show where female contestants recounted their emotional and financial tales of woes in order to win appliances. The winner was decided by an applause meter. That early reality show stuck with me.
I’ve always wanted to be a queen for a day.
Not to get a vacuum cleaner, but for the power to make policy. When I’m queen, I’ll awake every morning, take a look around my queendom, and issue edicts that make life better for my subjects. We’ll have a clean environment. The queen will tackle poverty, illiteracy and homelessness. I’m not sure how to fix those social ills, but I’ll better the lives of my subjects.
I’ll lobby world leaders to join me on my mission for peace. My cabinet will include all the queen’s women, because I’ll dismiss men who make regressive political choices like the one mentioned above. Women in power can do the job as well as men have done. And we’ll be slower to commit our sons and daughters to war.
Her majesty’s ultimate wish is my favorite quote from the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
Be it henceforth decreed, that we shall discover fire for the second time. It’s all in a day’s work when you’re the queen.
Although I can never reign, I do have a sphere of influence. When my teenage son challenged the weight of his voice in family decision-making he confronted me by saying, “I thought we live in a democracy.”
I responded, “We do. We live in a Dee Dee-mocracy. Case closed.”
Murphy is a member of the Carrollton Creative Writers Club and the Carrollton Civic Woman’s Club. Reach her at shareyouropinions@yahoo.com.
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