Perhaps. I think if Jefferson could see the place now where he spent his days, he'd be stunned and probably horrified by how crowded, polluted, busy, and just plain bizarre it has become.

One of the really serious problems in human life, Kent, is that people tie themselves to very old documents (such as the Constitution or the Bible or the Koran or the Bagavad Gita or anything else that was written long ago) and they decide to give it total and unquestioned authority, and they try to apply it literally to a situation that is radically different from when it was written.

Would you agree that that can lead to problems?

The problem is in the literal approach, which is an approach taken by people who don't like to think. They'd rather just obey, so they get a book and some "leaders" think for them.

In that fashion some very crazy things have been done by successive generations of people.

Now...if you're enough of a thinker to look beyond literal interpretations of old documents to the core of what was meant philosophically, then you can find much of value there.

The Constitution was trying to prevent a system like the British monarchy from running the 13 colonies in an autocratic way. It was well designed for that purpose, and with high ideals. What we need now is similarly high ideals...and a whole new set of literal forms with which to clothe those ideals.

I think it would be wise to review documents like the Constitution about every 20 years and see if conditions have changed...and if they have, amend the darn thing so that it's up to date.

Otherwise you're following a fossilized form of thinking. Rather like a dinosaur. That can lead to problems.

Remember...it was a group of men who wrote the Constitution, and they did the best they could at the time, but men are not perfect. It was not the hand of God that reached down out of the sky and wrote it. It is not ULTIMATE authority...unless you say it is... and then it's only ultimate authority for you...as long as you believe it is. You have no more backup for that than someone from any other country (or religion) who believes in their old documents and rules. It's all stuff that people made up! All of it.

They may have been inspired (in many cases) by God...or they may not have been...not for me to say, but I know this: no one can prove they were, therefore no one can prove that any of it has ultimate authority over anyone.