People v. State

fairly undermining public confidence in the administration of justice
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“To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.”

September 17, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Aldous Huxley, Henry George, Iroquois, Thomas Jefferson

Thus wrote Justice Robert Jackson almost 70 years ago, as quoted in a NYT op-ed by Kent Greenfield which points out that “Constitution Day is probably unconstitutional.”

What is it that I find admirable and worthy of emulation in the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy? Pretty much the same things I find admirable and worthy of emulation in Aldous Huxley’s vision of a just society:

If I were now to rewrite the book [Brave New World], I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity… In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque and co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man’s Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle – the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: “How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man’s Final End?”

See also the following letters written by Thomas Jefferson:

The Earth Belongs to the Living (1789)

“A Real Christian” (1816)

The Ward System (1816)

The Test of Republicanism (1816)

Reform of the Virginia Constitution (1816)

“I Too Am An Epicurean” (1819)

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