by hilzoy
Guess what? Two hundred and seventeen years ago today, on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire ratified the United States Constitution. It was the ninth state to do so, and since the Constitution became binding once nine states ratified it, today is the 217th birthday of our being bound by it. So:
Happy birthday to the bindingness of the US Constitution! May we try to deserve it.
(I am glad they added the Bill of Rights, though.)
Happy Birthday! It doesn't look a day over 215!
Posted by: Anarch | June 21, 2005 at 03:32 AM
Woo! Constitutional bondage!
:-D
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Posted by: Jesurgislac | June 21, 2005 at 04:28 AM
So today you want us to celebrate, not the specific content of the Constitution, but merely the very fact of its bindingness?
If we hadn't known you were a Kantian before, this alone would give away the game. (Not that that's a bad thing, of course).
Oh--and happy birthday, Constitutional bindingness!
Posted by: Tad Brennan | June 21, 2005 at 07:45 AM
and: Happy Birthday, Summer 05.
Posted by: cleek | June 21, 2005 at 07:57 AM
Ooh -- and today is also the solistice. Could the founding fathers have been aware of some ancient conspiracy between the Knights Templar and the Masons, which revolved around the consummation of history which would take place at the summer solistice of the millenium? Just askin'.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | June 21, 2005 at 07:59 AM
I can add only this to Jeremy's thoughts:
/
Burma Shave.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh | June 21, 2005 at 09:06 AM
Don't be silly. The Knights Templar were Masons.
OT, anyone seen National Treasure? Anyone else besides me need a whole lot more structural support to suspend that much disbelief?
Posted by: Slartibartfast | June 21, 2005 at 09:20 AM
I am unable to suspend my disbelief much owing to a strained credulity I got during the Iraq war runup.
Live free or die, baby.
Posted by: Delicious Pundit | June 21, 2005 at 09:53 AM
How can you say the Constitution is binding on us when all those liberal activist judges can interpret it to mean whatever they want it to mean?
;)
Posted by: kenB | June 21, 2005 at 10:05 AM
Don't be silly. The Knights Templar were Masons.
Nonono, you're thinking of the Rosicrucians...
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | June 21, 2005 at 10:32 AM
Tad: would I be celebrating its bindingness in abstraction from any consideration of its content? I don't think so. It would have been a whole lot less significant if only eight states had ratified it, is all. :PPPP
Posted by: hilzoy | June 21, 2005 at 11:16 AM
OT, anyone seen National Treasure? Anyone else besides me need a whole lot more structural support to suspend that much disbelief?
Yes, but my liver couldn't take it.
Posted by: Anarch | June 21, 2005 at 11:53 AM
Is National Treasure that movie about the mint?
Also, are there any actually good movies out there. for a person who might just possibly drag herself to Batman Begins, but would not in a million years go to whatever the Star Wars thing is?
(General tastes: schlock OK as long as it is entertaining, intelligent dialogue always a plus; important distinction between fun guys-smash-things-up movies (e.g., Lethal Weapon) and guys-smash-things-up-for-no-reason-whatsoever movies (lots of action movies that other people seem to like). Violence per so doesn't bother me, for some reason, though if there's nothing else to redeem the entire movie, it does.
Out of the summer blockbuster realm: intelligent dialogue and interesting characters make all the difference in the world; I have a hard time with movies in which I can't like anyone, at all, even if I try really hard; I am not too big on cynicism as an excuse for an entire movie; I love anything by Jane Austen, and my favorite movie of all time is The Philadelphia Story. Sci-fi for its own sake fails to move. Humiliating other people is, to me, not funny but excruciating, and 'funny' movies built around this are possibly the worst movies at all, always excepting the Worst Movie Ever, which is Endless Love, followed by Iron Eagle.)
Posted by: hilzoy | June 21, 2005 at 12:02 PM
Movies I intend to see this summer:
--Batman Begins. The reviews all seem to speak of its intelligence as a quality that will destroy box-office revenues. My personal Comic Book Guy urges me to buy multiple tickets to reward the directors and producers.
--Me and You and Everyone We Know. Small film about online dating, personal family struggles, but it might be showing in only one theater in the West Village. The Onion and the NYT reviewers are speaking of this film in hushed, reverential tones.
(Oh, and Happy Bindingness of the Law Day!)
Posted by: Jackmormon | June 21, 2005 at 12:15 PM
I'm looking forward to seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | June 21, 2005 at 12:44 PM
This reminds me of one of the great historical ironies about the period that the Constitution was up for ratification; namely, that the Federalist Papers--which were written and published in an attempt to convince New York to ratify the Constitution and which are still cited today as perhaps the foremost documents for what two of the central architects of the Constitution were thinking when they wrote it--failed to accomplish that purpose, as the first ratification vote taken by the New York legislature went down to defeat. Only after the ninth state ratified--which would have left New York on its own as a separate nation had it continued to hold out--did New York overcome its Anti-Federalist impulses and ratify the new Constitution.
Posted by: M. Scott Eiland | June 21, 2005 at 02:19 PM
National Treasure isn't about the Mint so much as it is about...brace yourself...how freemasons brought the Templar treasure overseas and buried it under Wall Street in a cavern roughly the size of the combined Smithsonian. Or something like that.
Now, the idea that there was a whole pile of loot that the Templars may have squirreled away somewhere is interesting. The idea that the Masons among our founding fathers arranged for a truly titanic task of excavation, transportation and interment of a vast quantity of ostensibly HEAVY treasure and managed to keep it secret for a couple of hundred years, and hid the directions to the treasure in invisible ink on the back of the Constitution, which could only be read using a set of 3-d glasses devised by Ben Franklin...well, you can see there's a record-breaking unbroken span of disbelief required, there. Add in that those glasses could only be located at a particular time of the year (I forgot this part, because not ready for the burden was I) that just happened to be immediately after when Nicholas Cage managed to swipe the US Constitution in plain sight...
Posted by: Slartibartfast | June 21, 2005 at 02:31 PM
...but he only stole it to keep the Bad Guys from stealing it, so no worries.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | June 21, 2005 at 02:39 PM
I thought National Treasure was quite pleasantly absurd. Most movies would have stopped short with maybe one of those absurd ideas to drive their plot - but no! It just doesn't let up, it doesn't stop, it just gets more and more ridiculous.
Posted by: Jonas Cord | June 21, 2005 at 05:00 PM
Woo! Constitutional bondage!
:-D
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Posted by: Jesurgislac | June 21, 2005 04:28 AM
classic!
Posted by: NeoDude | June 21, 2005 at 05:57 PM
"Tad: would I be celebrating its bindingness in abstraction from any consideration of its content? I don't think so. "
No, but I was hoping to tempt you into a *derivation* of its content from the mere formal fact of its bindingness. I was especially looking forward to the transcendental argument for the Congressional power to establish post offices, produced from nothing but the Law that there should be a Law.
Posted by: Tad Brennan | June 21, 2005 at 07:25 PM
Me? Make the Eichmann mistake? I make many, many mistakes, but luckily that has never been among them. Interesting as it would be to derive not just the COnstitution, but also its state both before and after all of its amendments, a priori.
Posted by: hilzoy | June 21, 2005 at 07:28 PM
Ah yes--nothing like a priori derivations of contingent states of affairs....That's when you know you're doing philosophy in the grand style.
Posted by: Tad Brennan | June 21, 2005 at 07:52 PM