HomerSimpsonClause

  I was working in Ukraine and had been invited to the house of a law professor. He lived in a house outside the city and he
paid dearly for the privilege, for there was no plumbing…he used a well and outdoor privy…and he and his sons had to
install a generator in order to have electricity…this was what the Soviets called loosening the strings and letting people
move back to the country. But he had a yard, a garden, and most of all, he had more than the allotted nine hundred square
feet of living space. His dining room table seated sixteen.
We worked for about three hours, where I actually enjoyed “tripping through the snow” going out to the outhouse, which I
hadn’t done since I was a kid. That smell is universal…and eternal, by the way. Anyway, people started coming in as it
started to get dark…winter in Ukraine was always sort of dark because of the large cloud of pollution that hung over the area
(just remember that it’s that type of government the environmentalists want to install in America in order to clean up the air)
…and my translator told me it was my host’s birthday and we’d been invited to stay for the party.
Most of the crowd were academicians at the university, and as they were introduced to me the grilling on the Constitution
began again….except it was done over a steady stream of the Russian national cocktail, vodka, only this was a home brew
version called ‘samogan’, a potent hooch.
After three of those thankfully we were asked to take a seat at the long table. Then everyone stood and another round of
vodka began as almost every guest had to make a toast, a Russian tradition I dread every time I sit down to eat with them.
Finally the toasts worked their way up to the host, who stood and made a very few comments in which I recognized my
name amidst the Ukrainian amenities. He turned to me and held up his glass and my translator whispered in my ear that I
was to make the host’s keynote address as I was the honored guest tonight.
About all I knew of Ukrainian was “svoboda” or freedom so while I was wishing freedom on everyone, I was fumbling
through my inside jacket pocket looking for my little Cato Institute booklet on the Constitution. For some reason, though,
since they knew it better than me, I turned to the back of the book and began reading the Declaration of Independence, you
know, where it starts... “When in the course of human events…”

In those days I didn’t know those opening lines by heart, and could only say a line at a time so it could be translated, so by
the time I got to “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” everyone had been holding their glass up for over a minute. I
decided to hurry it along… “…that all men are created equal (translate), and they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights (translate) and that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness (translate). Coming to
this point I looked up and down the table and was stunned to see that every face in the room had tears rolling down its
cheeks.
Must be the samogan I thought. Anyway I finished in a hurry, and we all sat down to eat. After dinner, as I was paying my
respects to the host, two of the guests came running up in an agitated manner, and said, “Mister, Mister, now we
understand Constitution!” How?, I asked, since I’d read from the Declaration.
Their answer taught me a lesson I never intend to unlearn…and I suggest you do as well. They said, “According to
Declaration even Ivan Ivanovich (the Russian version of Homer Simpson) can pursue life and liberty without help or
permission of state.”
There you have it.
  I thought about it and sure enough, the operative term in that part of the Declaration is “self-evident”…namely, that even
Homer Simpson can figure out life, liberty and how to pursue happiness.

  This was, still is, the handshake between the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It was the handshake
between Jefferson and Hamilton, and probably the only one.
If you don’t believe that the Homer Simpsons of the world can build and pass on their own house, no matter how flimsy the
barn slats and wall-paper, no matter how snot-eyed the children, without oversight and management from their betters,
then you are no friend of the Constitution.

  It’s that simple.

THE HOMER SIMPSON CLAUSE TO THE US CONSTITUTION -Moses Sands

Since I first began going to the USSR in the 1960s, people would come up to me with
questions about the Constitution. They were very interested in it and would point to
some clause or article and say, “We can’t do this” or “Is impossible to do that”. People of
the Soviet Bloc also took things so literally and they looked at the Constitution like it as
Ford owner’s manual, you know, one, turn the key, two, let off the clutch, three, move the
gear stick into first, etc.
I knew there was an essence in the Constitution they were missing, but could never find
the right words, no matter how many translators I tried…until...

…one night in December, 1991, just before the fall of the Hammer and Sickle.