An Originalist Speaks

I am an originalist. Washington Jefferson Madison Franklin received a code, from where I know not. They read it in the mists above the Potomac. Or heard it chiming in the smoky air of a Mason ritual. This code made them wealthy - this is the pursuit of happiness. I like the smell of old documents - parchment and ink suffused with the passage of time, though the document be eternal. They broke with the King because it was time to cross the mountains. Appalachia and the Ohio Valley would be ours. Damn the Indians to an un-sacred oblivion - for they know not what is destiny, what is destined. I am an originalist. I took a blood oath. I saw Washington's death mask in the Masonic Temple in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The contours of his face, the look he had facing death: It was like he knew the slaves he had kept were waiting for him. Terror and absence. The words the founders wrote constitute a code. The constitution of an eternal form. There was talk in England of winding down the unique Southern project. The English did not understand what this country was meant to be. This land would not be tamed by the timid. Great works are not made without divisions between the high and the lowly. This is part of the code. Ten commandments were written in stone. Moses understood what it is to receive a code perched on the other side of a mountain - residing in the mouth of God. All one need to do is ask God to open his mouth and extract the words. 'Sixteen days in Georgia, I went out beyond the barn. Goose in the mill pond, cow's in the corn.'

                                                woodcut by Tom Killon

1Larry Parker