Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 25
The framers could not reach consensus on how to correct the contradiction between
their dream and reality, but they prudently opted to not let the disagreement sink the
new nation before it was fully born. Wisely, they gave us a principle of law containing
the seeds for future correction, though at the time they did not suspect the high cost
these corrections would demand.
Trumping all the enlightened thinking distilled in the Declaration of Independence and in
the Constitution, the harsh reality of a divided America presented a bi-polar personality
to the world and to itself. In time it became a historical necessity to resolve the issue
one way or another. Were all men really created equal? Did the founders mean only
men of European extraction? Was freedom a right for everyone or for just a privileged
few? Was justice exclusively the rule of the strong? Was this a moral or an economic
issue? These and other profound questions were the central issues postulated by our
founders but left unanswered until future generations could muster the wisdom and
courage to resolve them.
Despite the incredibly high cost America paid to work itself out of a long, dark and
shameful bout with slavery and the abusive domination of not just black slaves but also
of the native Indian population, the Founding Fathers’ social compact survived. It
preserved for all Americans, no matter their race, color, religion or national origin, the
hope to realize individual dreams and to enjoy the attendant benefits of these dreamscome-true.
In an allegoric comparison, they gave birth to an infant with a serious tumor,
but they also provided the tools to extirpate it –a pre-agreed procedure to amend the
Constitution. When one of the parents refused to use the tool, the other had no recourse
but to enforce its use.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution survived to become entrenched
in the popular consciousness of the country and ultimately to guarantee their
preservation and application, in all their significance, into the body of our laws. In time,
the unflinching acceptance of the constitution by all the people propelled the United
States to an inescapable role as a world leader. We have the best tool of government
and it seems most of us, the governed, like it well enough to accept and defend it. But
this was not so at the beginning. Tests of its universal acceptance were not long in
coming. Allegorically, the tumor in the child had to be excised and nobody could fathom
the consequences.
At its inception, the dream of an America with equal opportunity for all was not yet true.
In less than a lifetime after the founding of the nation the great test came.
Octogenarians during the Civil War had been children at George Washington’s
inaugural and many actually had memories of their parents’ battles to throw the English
out. But was the country now ready to live up to its promises? In 1861 the Southern
states seceded from the Union determined to prove the dream would never be.
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