What makes Douglass’ praise for the constitution even more unlikely was that he did so according to its “plain reading”; or in other words, as it had been written. He spoke these words before America fought a Civil War to decide once and for all the issue of slavery and even before a single piece of Civil Rights legislation had passed through congress. Douglass did not complain about the lack of specifics in the constitution that indicated what the government “must do on your behalf”, as then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama famously did in a 2001 interview. Nor did he decry that it was a “charter of negative liberties” which, as President Obama has stated he believes, “represented the bias of the founders.”
Douglass’ words came even before The Constitution came to be viewed by many as a series of court cases and precedents rather than a stand-alone document. For example, his praise did not rest on the decision made in Brown vs. Board of Education which would come over 100 years later. Douglass apparently understood that civil rights would not be the products of court decisions, but that they were intrinsic to the nature of our republican form of government.
How far has this country fallen that views of an ex-slave and arguably the nation’s greatest abolitionist are today characterized as the views of white, racist, demagogues? Today, advocates of limited and constitutional government are routinely skewered in the media being subjected even to childish name-calling without a moment’s hesitation by prominent national figures. What was self evident to Douglass, and countless others who believed as he did, is relegated to the margins.
This all begs the question: what did Frederick Douglass, a man who could have easily been forgiven for hating this nation, understand that the American left doesn’t?
This Valentine’s Day in addition to celebrating our own valentine, we should take a moment to remember Harriet Bailey little valentine, Frederick. His words and views are as important today as they were 200 years ago.