The rhetoric of compromise

Why has the United States constitution functioned so effectively for almost 218 years? It is the oldest constitution as such--as opposed to the British constitution, which is merely a state of mind, rather than a document--which has operated without a total rewrite. For comparison's sake, the French are on their Fifth Republic.
The answer, I tell you, is compromise. The greatest virtue and deepest flaw of a capitilist democracy, is that there are no moral absolutes--everything is negotiable. The only time our constitution failed to protect us from civil chaos, was when folks were not willing to compromise on slavery, seeing it as either a total evil or a God-given economic necessity. The fact of the matter is, slavery was really awful, but the Southerners did have a point in that it was quantitatively no worse than Northern wage-slavery. In fact, in ancient Roman times, removed from "modern" theories of race, day-laborers were considered to be even lower than slaves in the social hierarchy.



Now, obviously, what I am suggesting repulses me even as I write it. The idea that slavery could somehow be morally acceptable makes me shudder. However, the death of almost 700,000 of the nation's youth and the complete economic destruction of an entire region of the country are also quite horrible as well.
The fact of the matter is, morality is subjective. Surely, once Fort Sumter was fired upon, only a true pacifist could have opposed the war. However, the American Civil War was a terrible stain on this continent's history, and dwarfed any of the previous European Wars in comparison. If somehow, a compromise could have been reached, so that slaves would be gradually emancipated, as they were in other parts of the world, would that not have been somewhat good? As it is, the Civil War was itself only somewhat good, and the horrible period of virulent racism that followed was itself stimulated by the defeat of Southern manhood on the battlefield.
Okay, so here comes my point. I am extremely conflicted on the topic of abortion. I feel it to be morally abhorrent, and could never bring myself to urge anyone to engage in the practice. However, if judges who will try and whittle away at the hard-won freedoms the working men and women of this country achieved in the past century will be appointed, solely because they have an extreme view on this issue, I cannot see this as good.
So why can't the Senators cut a deal to preserve some of the basic functions of our democracy (anyone see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and maybe allow one or two extremely right wing judges to go by. The fact of the matter is, Congress in the 90's held up a far greater percentage of Bill Clinton's judicial nominees than are being held up currently.
Also, this whole Bolton thing? Why can't the Republicans see that this guy is crazy. I'm not asking for some left-wing peacenik to take the job. Just get me a conservative that doesn't have the vast majority of his or her screws loose.



This country wouldn't exist if our founding fathers didn't agree to define "all other persons" as three-fifths of a human being. That is a horrible thought, but the fact is, if Thomas Jefferson were able to control his own spending, and hadn't been a debtor his whole life, he possibly would have lead the way to gradual emancipation. Thus, hundreds of thousands died, and millions more suffered a loss of human dignity, because the moral cowardice of one man who could have possibly led the effort for compromise. Sometimes compromise is the hardest moral path to follow.
Peace.