The original wokesters

History is a funny thing, and we are living in truly historic times. There are several adages about history that most of us are familiar with, such as “those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it”. The puzzling thing is that so many just don’t know history, the story of us and how we got here today.  

As an illustration, during this political season, we hear many who desire positions of leadership making proclamations about the founding of this country and the men who helped frame our government, their intents and their motivations. The shocking part of these statements is that so many times these boastful candidates and politicians are completely ignorant of the truth and history of what actually happened.   

The Founding Fathers of our nation, the framers of our Constitution were unique products of the historical era known as the Age of Enlightenment. This was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 18th century, mostly centered in Europe, that emphasized reason over suspicion and science over blind faith. The ideas of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among others, brought forth challenges to the long period of superstition, repression, ignorance and a geocentric theory of the cosmos – an era known as The Dark Ages. 

Locke, Rousseau and others promoted the notion of a “social contract,” the idea that government receives its powers from the consent of those who are governed. They promoted the idea that there were inalienable rights, and accompanying those rights were responsibilities. They promoted the idea that all men are created equal. These were radical, revolutionary ideas shared amongst the literate elite of European society. In our world today, they would be considered far left-wing ideas; in a word, they were “woke.” 

In our current vernacular, woke is used as an adjective, meaning someone is aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). We cannot deny that our Founding Fathers were attentive to important societal facts and issues of their day. They were not perfect, but they did create a founding document that for the time was radical, forward thinking and capable of changing. The Constitution, as created, was not a perfect document, but it had a built-in apparatus to bring us toward “a more perfect union.” The Amendment process allows the people to improve upon the original document, and we have done so 27 times.  

The history of our nation has been a steady, sometimes halting, march forward. The citizens rights have constantly been expanding, including who is even considered a citizen. The process of selecting our representatives has also been changing, as has been who may be qualified to be elected. With various amendments to our Constitution, we have been striving toward becoming a more perfect union.  

In this political season, we sometimes illustrate the lesser characteristics of our experience. When “woke” becomes a pejorative label causing people to be subject to ridicule and persecution; when books are banned from schools and libraries because their content makes some uncomfortable; when basic medical care is denied to pregnant women; when public school students are taught that slavery had some redeeming characteristics; and when some promise that by voting for a certain candidate it would remove the “worry” of ever having to vote again, I doubt that our Founding Fathers would say that we have reached a more perfect union. To me, a foundational knowledge of our history is critical to our path forward.

– Gene Orr, retired educator of 43 years, Durango