My husband and I have lived in a limited-equity apartment complex for 36 years. It’s a terrific deal – low monthly maintenance costs in one of the country’s most expensive housing markets. We share ownership of the property with 25 other residents. When we leave we must sell back our share. Meanwhile members participate in governance, and chores (or don’t). The founder of our Co-op, an idealistic (and well-heeled) organizational psychologist, initiated consensus decision-making and the honor system for work participation, so endless hours are spent debating procedures and policies.
This being Berkeley, it worked for the first decade, but now Obstructionists leave meetings to destroy quorum, make expensive stealth visits to lawyers, and boycott meetings, etc. The worst spends hours composing diatribes ridiculing and maligning targeted members. He claims that’s Free Speech, which, along with Property, he views as the hallowed Cornerstones of our Government.
But this interpretation of free speech is warped. As is his rosy view of the Good Old Days. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was finally accepted by the delegates, but it did not contain any sort of Bill of Rights, although that question had been heavily debated.
He’s also forgotten, or perhaps was never aware of how quickly the First Amendment was swept aside, beginning with four Sedition Acts of 1798 that made it illegal to speak, write, or print any statement about the president which brought him “into contempt or disrepute.”
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of the United_States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.
It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion.
So much for Sacred Cows and Cornerstones. At least for now, we get to decide how to conduct ourselves and meetings.
Personal accusations, aspersions, and speculations on others’ intentions are not helpful or germane to public discourse. While some may long for the good old days when our now revered Founding Fathers paid others to malign their political rivals, most of us don’t find it constructive to label each other as cowards or “hideous hermaphrodites”.
At least, so far. The most cursory mainstream news shows us where extremist interpretations of Free Speech are heading.
But despite evidence to the contrary, the majority of our population still maintains we’re entitled to pursue Happiness, and expects to attain it. Contrary to public opinion, the concept did not originate in the mind of slave-owner Thomas Jefferson. We owe this wishful thinking to George Mason, one of only three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution.
It’s interesting that George Mason declined to sign the Constitution, because it was from his draft for the Virginia Declaration of Rights that Jefferson lifted this and other phrases. Recognizing their eloquence, Jefferson inserted them into The Declaration of Independence, in particular, the part about our “inalienable right to happiness” which no country or government had ever promised previously. Alas, the wording was later changed to “unalienable” but more importantly, “happiness” appears only one more time in our hallowed documents before being stricken and replaced forever more with definitions and considerations of property.
Given that the average American has far more possessions and resources than our forbears could ever conceive, are we now doomed to be venal hoarders? No, turns out there’s still hope. The most constructive and affordable strategies I’ve found for dealing with this tragic slight of hand are generously shared by the brilliant and prolific pediatric endocrinologist/lawyer, Dr. Robert Lustig, in his new exposé, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. It may well be the most important book you read this decade.
