Bill of Duties Revisited

Fellow blogger John A invited me to respond to the Bill of Rights with a corresponding Bill of Duties. I started to write up some legaleze-sounding gibberish that directly responded to the first two ammendments to the Constitution. As I was explaining the verbage, I quickly realized that I was trying to write something that told people to just behave themselves, for crying out loud.

But what qualifies as good behavior? As a Catholic, the answer popped into my head immediately: the ten Judeo-Christian commandments. A quick check on the web tells me that Islam also adheres to the essential points of the ten commandments. I was happy to see mention of things in the Qur'an such as "Keep one's promises" and "Be honest and fair". Those sorts of things are described in the Judeo-Christian Bible as well, just not as part of the ten commandments. These are our duties as citizens of a community.

If I had responded to the Bill of Rights point by point, I would have established limits on freedoms with the intent of avoiding social damage produced by excessive use of those freedoms. Such statements would originate in a desire to have citizens do no harm. That's known as the Silver Rule: Commit No Harm. A nation with the potential of America must rely on a finer, more demanding metric, the Golden Rule: Do Good Works.

It's not enough to say that what you're doing isn't hurting anyone. You must do things that help the community. A community only operates while its members are committed to the community above themselves. Look to anyone in your community who builds that community and you'll find someone who acts for the improvement of the community. They spend their time on the well-being of the community instead of spending it on themselves. Alas, we were given the Bill of Rights, which emphasized self without an equal or greater emphasis on the health of the community. That encouraged Americans to think in terms of personal freedoms and liberties without a commensurate consideration of the needs of the community.

So if I were making ammendments that were needed to establish a bill of duties, it would include things like telling the truth, respecting others, taking care of one's own health, pursuing one's own maturation, participation in community, etc, etc, etc. All the things that we were taught in kindergarten, before we got so clever and decided to focus on pursuing our civil liberties to extremes.

Ultimately, the founding fathers missed the mark. They believed that people were fundamentally Christian in demeanor, and that liberties could be granted to them without fear of an erosion of the society. Ultimately, society has flexed and twisted so much over the past 200 years that our freedoms have burdened us as terribly as the overbearing rule of a monarch.

Bill of Duties

When our country was founded, some very smart men realized that an important thing needed to be written down: what are the rights that citizens of the new nation possess? The Bill of Rights was born. At the time of its composition, being an American was a very new phenomenon, the nation being only a few years old. The Revolutionary War was rooted in a dissatisfaction with the treatment of the colonists by the British government, and we can see that dissatisfaction reflected in the Bill of Rights, which has a lengthy list of things that a government can't do to its citizens. It's a fine list.

Unfortunately for America, it is a list that is rooted in a reaction to the problems of that time, and there is an implicit assumption that the prevailing social order would remain. That is, America was full of people who were working hard to develop the land, explore, engage in commerce and raise families. People worked for a living, and the gap between the richest and the poorest was fairly narrow, relative to today. Most everyone was still close to the land. The industrial revolution simply hadn't arrived yet. Family was a critical part of life. It was the way it had been for hundreds of years and as far as the founding fathers were concerned, it was going to continue that way.

As a result, the founding fathers felt safe in their metaphorical pushing-away of the known evils of their beloved British Empire. If life had continued close to the land and to family, everything would likely have worked out. Unfortunately, the industrial revolution was soon to arrive.

Most everything that changes causes challenges to the existing social order. Some revel in the changes, while other are terrified by them. Usually, the young embrace the new, because both the old way and the new way are equally 'new'. When the industrial revolution arrived, the world reeled with the changes. Cities expanded and become centers of production of goods. Efficiency of machinery meant that fewer farmers were needed in the fields, and so on. It was a lot of changes, and the existing social order flexed in response to the changes.

This is where the Bill of Rights comes back into the picture. When all those changes were taking place, whether originating in the industrial revolution or in any of a number of other ways, the prevailing social structures constituted the fences and borders that decided how the society would react. The Bill of Rights is one such fence. More accurately, it is the removal of some fences and borders that used to be in place. Governments used to tell people what they could and could not talk about, or what sorts of religious expression were permitted, etc. Those are some serious fences. The Bill of Rights knocked them down.

I know that I wouldn't want to live in a society where the government dictated what I could say in public. I likely couldn't write these articles in the free association style that I use. I'd probably have to have a lawyer look them over to make sure that I wasn't saying anything I shouldn't.

That said, there are limits to all things. It's not legal to threaten the President of the United States. You can't say stuff like that. You also can't slander people or commit libel. So there are at least SOME limits on freedom of speech, contrary to the claims of the Bill of Rights (it does say "no law" after all).

Why do we have these laws? Because it is in the best interest of the nation to have them. Said another way, there is no value to the community to let people threaten the President, nor to commit libel or to slander another person. Those are reflections of the duties of the citizens of the United States.

That brings me to the topic of the article: Bill of Duties. The Bill of Rights opened up new territory of freedom, but without any statement on how much is too much. A Bill of Duties would be a balancing statement to help us figure out where the limits are.

For example, what if the Bill of Duties said that we had a duty to use our skills for the betterment of the community? Smart people would then spend time trying to figure out what "betterment" boiled down to, making laws that were in support of that goal of betterment.

What if the Bill of Duties said that we had a duty to aid in the upbringing of children in our community? Laws would be passed to ensure that many more teachers, mentors and instructors would be available to our children. Those teachers would be mindful of their duties towards those children and would also instill that ethic in those children. They would be dutiful to the children who are younger still.

It would be an interesting experience to collect a bunch of our best and brightest minds, assemble a Bill of Duties, and see where that might lead this country - no matter the curveballs that were thrown at it. We need to be more than just the land of the free. We need to be the land of the dutiful.

Small Crimes, Small Punishments

Our prisons are chock full of criminals, and we're busily raising the next generation of criminals. In public schools, teachers are not permitted to physically discipline students. I believe that is the source of so many problems in our society. When a child misbehaves, that child should be physically disciplined. A spanking. A smack on the back of the hand. A firm grip on the shoulder and a steely look in the eye, warning the child not to transgress again.

This can obviously be taken too far, and it can become abusive towards children. That is clearly something to be limited. But we're currently at the other end of the spectrum, where children have an implicit association between getting in trouble and being either talked to death with yet another lecture or bored to death with another simpleminded punishment. These types of feedback for improper behavior work for some large percentage of children, but they don't work for some additional percentage. And those kids are the ones that need to be reminded, physically, that some behaviors are inappropriate.

Talking back to a teacher is serious stuff, and should be treated as such. That child should either be removed from the classroom or physically disciplined on the spot in some appropriate way. But in the spirit of "small crimes, small punishments", students shouldn't even be getting to the point of talking back to a teacher. When a child doesn't follow reasonable instructions in a reasonable way, there should be instant feedback for that child's behavior. If a child doesn't sit, the teacher can make the child sit. Not by talking him or her to death, but by placing a strong hand on the child's shoulder and making him or her sit.

This concept goes beyond school. It applies to all levels of our society. If a teenager commits a small crime, have them get some physical feedback. If a teen steals a car, tazer 'em. Twice, if need be. Public canings sound like a good way to get a message across to a young adult mind that our society will not tolerate vandalism and other petty crimes.

Public canings may sound medieval and cruel, but I suggest that it is far more cruel to permit young minds to develop with the notion that disrespecting or even violating the rule of law is perfectly reasonable. Such minds are forever handicapped by fundamental beliefs that will impair their ability to function effectively in society.

I'd even apply this to adults. What if driving faster than the speed limit resulted in being tazered instead of paying a small fine? It would wipe out a revenue stream for local governments, but it would also result in quick and simple justice that people would be really sure not to fall into.

The ideal is to have the punishment be applied instantly, as well. Drive too fast in your car, and a special unit arrives immediately that includes a judge and a medical team to apply the punishment right then, right there. Punish someone days or weeks after they commit a crime and the association between crime and punishment is lost. Punish someone in the very instant that they are commiting the crime and their brain will very clearly establish the association between the two events. That simple association is what's needed, and it's why I begin with school-age children.

Ultimately, we have a ponderous system for dealing with criminals and, as a result, we can only go after the most serious crimes. That's a lot like trying to put out too many forest fires with too few fire fighters. Put people on extinguishing fires as soon as they spark and there's much less of a need for putting out the big blazes.

Immigration

Four hundred years ago, Europeans came to America and began a very rare process: the creation of a brand new country from scratch. The existing population of native American tribes were pushed out, and colonists were pushed in. Those colonists weren't just anyone, picked up off the street. They were people who were motivated enough to take a dangerous ocean voyage in small sailing ships to a new land where they were going to have to build most everything they had.

For the next four hundred years, America became progressively easy to enter, but it still remained a nation viewed by much of the world as raw and uncultured. Those who wanted to reach America were interested in the opportunities of having their own land, of starting their own business, of pursuing that American notion of self-determination.

Because America was difficult to reach, only those people with the smarts, talent and determination reached America. The stay-at-home types did just that. They stayed at home. The ones who liked things the way they were in Europe stayed put. Those who were more willing to place their future in their own hands were the ones who chased the possibilities in America.

That has meant that America has been a filter of sorts. Most of the people who came to America were pursuing the future. They had a vision of what they could make out of their lives, and they pursued some dream that they had. Those are the people who made America the great nation that it is today.

There are many footnotes to be added here. America also has a whole culture of African Americans who were dragged into the nation as slaves. They didn't want to be here and now their descendants are with us as Americans. I see a disconnect between the descendants of the African slaves and the descendants of the Europeans who came over voluntarily, pursuing some dream. That same disconnect exists between the descendants of the African slaves and the Africans who came over of their own choice. The culture of America is built from the attitudes of people who are motivated to cross oceans to pursue dreams. The African slaves dragged over here wanted to stay in Africa. The intentions of the two groups is the source of the disconnect.

A similar disconnect exists between the current American culture and the remaining descendants of native Americans. They had a culture that worked for them. The European culture that morphed into the American culture was not their culture. It still isn't.

Such a disconnect will undoubtedly form as a result of the current flood of immigrants coming up from the south. Some number of those people are motivated according to the ethic that made America what it is today. But because of the relative ease of crossing the border, and because it involves breaking the standing laws of the land, the overall ethic of the people coming across the border is not a match with that of the existing population.

Mind you, I have nothing against any specific race. I have problems with those who act in ways that are contrary to the well-being of the community. Living on welfare due to sloth. Not taking full advantage of school. Free schooling, and still many do not take advantage of it. Declaring bankruptcy due to pure and simple overspending on discretionary items.

Those are just some pet peeves, but they represent counter-examples to the general notion that America works because people have been of a mind to make the most of themselves. those are the people that we want in America. Why do we want them? Because America is a kind of crucible of creativity. Great strides in every field of endeavor known to mankind have been made by the people of all the nations of the world who came to America, and those strides can only continue if every American can rely on every other American to do what is right. To do what is helpful and positive to the community.

When we consider the topic of immigration, we should be accepting as many top-notch applicants as we can, regardless of world quotas. People who want to help keep America an ethical, innovative and productive country are the people we want. I see hispanic men working their tails off on groundskeeping everywhere I go. I applaud that kind of work ethic, whether they are here illegally or not. Legality is an issue of will, and I have tried to point out that the will of America should be focused on the type of people we want in America - whether they are Americans or not.

For my money, there are a lot of people outside America who should be called Americans, and quite a few American citizens who just don't have the American ethic. Those who don't have the American ethic should go to a country that shares their ethic. They would undoubtedly be happier there. That, or they would change their attitude about the value of being a hard-working and honest American.

When debating the issue of immigration, stay focused on what it is that immigation is all about - finding people who share the traditional American ethic and can help us to be a better nation than we are.

Software Laws

They say that when the one tool that a man carries is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I'm a software engineer, so everything looks like a software problem to me. When I look at our legal system, I see a system of contracts that bind our society together. It just so happens that software is viewed in the same light - contracts. Not legal contracts of software companies, but rather contracts of behavior for the various bits and pieces of software and how they interact.

When Congress votes on tax law changes, what if they were actually voting on changes to standard tax software? This would mean that everyone could run their finances through the proposed tax software to find out what it ends up meaning to them. Collectively, the nation could understand what the change means to the entire country. More importantly, it would result in changes to the law that were very specific and very concrete. That's because the law has to be implemented by a computer. Computers don't interpret the law, they apply the instructions that they have been given. If Congress voted on those instructions instead of words that can be interpreted, then the law remains very precise.

This sort of pattern could be applied to a number of areas in the legal profession. Instead of having wording that nobody but a lawyer understands, the law would be captured by software programs that people could run to find out what they needed to do in certain situations, and to find out about their obligations.

In this world of software laws, our personal information as well as our day-to-day activities would be made available to be used with the software to learn what waits for us down the road. We could also play with the future assumptions to see what we can and cannot do. What will my social security monthly payout be if I retire on a particular date? If I get that raise next week, how will my taxes be changed?

So far, I've been focusing on money concerns: taxes, corporate law, social security and such. That's because those are very concrete processes that should be rigorously codified. Tax law is codified by companies today, and why the federal government doesn't do all that automatically is beyond my powers of comprehension.

When we get to the level of offenses that involve a trial by jury, software and computers are far less of value. That's because applying the law becomes very much a matter of interpreting perceptions. Did the man actually see what he thought he saw? Was the car moving? Is their friendship as strong as is being claimed? The law can be very precise in defining the limits of proper action, but determining if the actions performed in a specific set of circumstances is something that only people will be suited to for a long time to come.

There is much that computers and software can do for us today in the legal world. They would help us to make our laws precise, so that anyone can find out what the impact is on their life. The laws may remain obscure, exception-laden and convoluted, but they would be precise, and Americans could toy with the software to find out the consequences of various actions.

Let's keep law experts around for the places where there remains wiggle room of interpretation, but let's use the computer for the parts where we don't want any legal wiggling at all.