Yes, today is the day that the groundhog tells us if we are going to have six more weeks of winter. If this is not your first time reading this blog, you'll know the answer to that already. Whether this is your first, tenth, hundredth, or even thousandth time experiencing today, I hope that it is a good one.

Yes, I am referencing the movie Groundhog Day (1993). Probably the best film that Bill Murray ever starred in. His movie career has been one of playing the pompous jerk (not a bad niche), and this film suited that to a tee. Just my two cents.

I suppose tonight I'll be watching the DVD of the movie that I own for the eightieth time today.

The other day, I stopped to purchase some beverages to take with me to work. As I was leaving, I picked up a copy of the local university’s student newspaper. Given that it comes with no cost to me and it has a crossword puzzle and Sudoku puzzle, I figured that there was no harm in doing so.

A letter to the editor caught my attention. It was some response to a previous letter regarding a decision to not vote in the forthcoming elections. I do not know what rationale that the earlier missive had for excluding himself from the meaningless fiction of the democratic process , but the reasons for this writer were quite interesting, and entertaining, to read.

The gist of the author’s letter was that our government is an illegitimate entity, existing because it uses the threat of “kidnapping” at gunpoint in order to “steal” what is rightfully his. (I presume this is a reference to taxation.) His argument is that voting gives undue legitimacy to a monopolistic and corrupt system which has usurped our formerly limited democratic republic. He goes on with a line of reasoning that ultimately concludes that the American “empire” is in its last days, given the financial and foreign crises that face our country today.

The basis that he started with is that voting is a privilege and not a right. On this point I will agree. Given the various struggles that people who were not Caucasian male land-owners endured in order to achieve suffrage, we seem to believe that we have an absolute right to participate in government. That’s not what it says in the U.S. Constitution. That ancient document only spells out reasons why someone cannot be denied the privilege of voting; it never actually says who can actually vote.

However, he makes a fairly bold claim as to what is a right. He sees true human rights being those that extend from “self-ownership”, meaning that a person has the right to themselves and their property. I suppose that from a libertarian point-of-view, this makes complete sense. It might not lead to the same conclusions that the author made, but it does seem to be a decent place to begin a discussion on the nature of human rights.

Alas, there is at least one flaw in this assumption. As I see it, the right to property is not absolute. For example, one does not, indeed should not, have the right to enact deadly force on trespassers without additional considerations. (Trespassing on a private driveway is far different than trespassing on a military base.) At least this should not be the case when other methods for dealing with trespassers exist, such as erecting walls or summoning the local constable. Even outside of this, someone shouldn’t have an absolute right to creating pollution on their property.

In terms of rights to oneself, I’m not entirely sure what that even means. It might mean that a person has total freedom over their own bodies, at least as far as nature allows. This is an involved subject that I’ll reserve for a future blog, but one that I have been giving much thought to.

I had discussed in a previous blog the concept of inalienable rights, making the hypothesis that such rights are those that can be successfully defended. The problem with this is that it simply turns the concept of rights over to a mob mentality, and social psychology has far too many examples of how destructive this can be. Still, it does seem to be an unfortunate reality.

Perhaps what is far more useful in modern society is an analysis of “rights” that are afforded by the society itself. That is, what kind of civilisation do we want for ourselves and what is needed to achieve that? If we focus on rights that are bestowed upon a population rather than focus on what should not be taken away, maybe it would give society a more optimistic sense of being. It might be better to look at what good a government system can do than why we should keep government out of our lives. It might be the only way to resolve the various crises that face us today.

Yet another one of those holidays that you might not have heard of, or at least didn’t realise that it was today. In the United States, it is Constitution Day, marking the date in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention finalised and signed the document, at least for the most part.

Constitutions are interesting documents. As a general rule, they spell out the supreme law of the land. In that sense, it is ultimately a non-democratic document, for a democracy can simply override provisions in a constitution with a majority vote. However, that was not the intent of the men that formed the system of government. Instead, a constitution is the basis of a republic.

In a grander sense, that’s not a bad thing. Democracy really only works on the smallest levels, pretty much where everyone involved can gather in a room and discuss an issue before voting on it. That’s usually about the size of a small town or neighbourhood. Once we go past that, the opportunity for debate—real debate—is more or less lost in translation. Instead, you see posturing by some people that they wouldn’t get away with in front of everyone.

In regard to the U.S. Constitution, I know that among the nations that actually have a constitution, ours is the oldest. After 221 years, we are still dealing with a document that was written with a quill pen without the benefit of a word processor. It was also written at a time when the post took weeks to deliver the mail, as opposed to the relatively lightening speed of today’s postal service. In that sense, it was written with the idea that the goings-on in New Hampshire would be far removed from those of Georgia.

So why do we still hold onto it? Indeed, many of the attendees probably thought that it might last a few decades, and then another convention of some kind would have to come together and write up another one. I think that the main reason is two-fold.

First, the Constitution makes it very difficult to be amended. True, there are twenty-seven amendments, but ten came all at once, essentially a condition that some states requested be added in order to get Constitution approved in the first place. After that and the three amendments that the Civil War produced (which I note didn’t get voted on by several of the states that seceded), they’ve tended to be minor alterations, such as changing the date of inaugurations or extending voting rights. Any real change in the government itself is extremely unlikely to happen for that reason alone.

The other reason that I perceive, and admit this is personal observation, is that the Constitution is akin to holy writ. After all, the attendees at the 1787 convention are often called the Founding Fathers (capital letters) as if the Constitution was some revealed document from on high. I will admit that they were reasonably intelligent and well-versed in national affairs, but they were human beings, capable of letting their personal biases creep into discussion.

So am I advocating that we write up another one? I’m not sure. I suspect that even if we gathered people from all over to draft a new one, they would approach it as if they were writing on stone tablets. With so many different positions out there, there’s no way they could get beyond the most basic of structure.

Perhaps we could simply not have one at all. Great Britain seems to do fine without one. Ah, but Britain has something of an unwritten constitution, which the country seems to paid heed to. Even without a written document, we would likely squabble over the same minutia.

We do seem to take the Constitution as some kind of secular religion, with different sects making interpretations that vary with others. Perhaps the real Constitution is not what is written on paper, but what we try to read between the lines, trying to probe the minds of men long gone. Maybe we in the U.S. are stuck in the 18th century in terms of how we perceive government, and unless that is undone, any attempt to alter government for the better will most likely come to naught. But then, some people find that prospect perfectly fine.

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of what is so far the defining moment of the twenty-first century. A mere 254 days into the new millennium, four passenger airplanes were hijacked, with three of them crashing, intentionally, into buildings full of people. Because of this horrific crime against humanity, a new chapter of U.S. history was written, perhaps creating a darker version of what we were before. It just seems that even though life goes on as usual for most people, the lingering effects of these attacks remain, and we are seeing the result in our foreign policy and domestic political discourse.

Last year at this time, I wrote a blog giving my perceptions on the nature of terrorism. I made a semi-controversial statement suggesting that the attacks were merely a crime on a grand scale and not an act of war. My assessment of the situation is that wars are conducted by governments, either as a recognised government of some region or as a de facto government that we see in some places. The terrorists do not operate as a government in any meaningful way. If anything, they are more like the Mafia than the Taliban, which at least operated as some form of government.

A few weeks after the attack, I saw a left-leaning cartoon suggesting that declaring war on the terrorists was like declaring war on Mensa. (We’ll get those evil geniuses!) Indeed, is it even possible to declare war on a group? I mean, even with the Mafia, we cannot simply incarcerate its members simply for their association; they have to actually do something illegal themselves. (At least that’s the official story.)

Then again, this brings to question the definition of what a nation is. When we in the U.S. recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we make reference to “one nation”. However, this seems to ignore the existence of the First Nations such as the Cherokee and the Navajo. Despite being decimated by disease and combat, they and many others are technically their own nations, which the U.S. is constitutionally obliged to recognise. Many large organisations seem to act as some manner of nationhood, and even declare it as part of their name. (Think Nation of Islam.) There’s even a comedic talk-show host that has his own nation!

Outside of the U.S., the concept of nation is perhaps more distinct from what is actually a nation-state. In Canada, which also includes First Nations, the most recent government declared Quebec to be a nation. Methinks Quebec already thought this as their provincial legislative is called the National Assembly, even by non-sovereigntists. When we look at historical empires, they differed from ordinary kingdoms in that they were comprised of several nations, some of which were conquered but not always. In Africa, the various tribes that have existed since before arbitrary boundaries were drawn by European powers are perhaps nations in greater measure than what we see on maps.

Probably what best distinguishes a nation from simply a largish organisation is the level of fealty that it generates. I for example refer to the United States as my nation as that has my principal loyalty. That is likely not the case with First Nations denizens, who place their nation before the federal government. Many Quebecois certainly identify with their province more than the greater Canadian system. I can go on with references to Kurdistan, Chechnya, Basque-land, and even Amish country!

Robert E. Lee, pretty much the top general of the Confederacy, considered Virginia to be his country, more so than the U.S. as a whole. From this perspective he couldn’t be accused of committing treason when he fought against the U.S. army, of which he had been a member. The thing is that he was far from alone in that viewpoint, even in the states that remained in the Union. I note that before the Civil War, the term “United States” was a plural term; now hardly anyone references it that way. It’s as if the many "nations" that comprised the U.S. before that war merged into a larger one, with exceptions already mentioned.

In this sense, perhaps the terrorists responsible for vicious acts seven years ago do constitute a nation, even if it is one based purely on a common goal. Indeed, many of us consider the U.S. a nation built not on a common ancestry but rather on a common ideology. By this token, declaring war on this group of terrorists is perhaps appropriate after all for that is likely how they see it themselves. Declaring war on an idea itself is a whole other story, one that I hope to come back to.

Now if only we can do something about those evil geniuses!