“Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do often their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.” (Exodus 23:24)

The forgoing quotation from Exodus makes for a righteous society that would go to war when state ideology (the belief in one faceless God) is challenged. In 1788, the founding fathers of the United States, which included the scientist and inventor Benjamin Franklin (as well as James Madison), appreciated the limitations and destructive nature of righteousness by starting an amendment system to the Constitution, which follows from the amendment system for scientific knowledge as introduced by the Royal Society (see Footnote 1). Amendments 13 and 14 of the US Constitution abolished slavery and nullified the 3/5th Compromise clause making those of African descent comparable in value to those of European descent (see Footnote 2).

If Donald Trump dissolves the US Constitution, then the righteous in America will impose one belief system on all of us. Trump does not believe in diversity, including genetic diversity: he agrees with Howard Stern that his daughter, Ivanka, is “a piece of ass” (Nelson 2016). The American tradition includes scouring the planet for diversity and excellence in art, science, and technology. The Empire of Alexander the Great in the 4th Century BCE is memorable for its intellectual diversity which merged the Greek, Egyptian, and Persian cultures and established a library of internationally curated knowledge in Alexandria, but the empire ended. Let’s hope that the American experiment does not have the same fall from greatness now that diversity and being able to amend knowledge are under threat.

Footnote 1: In 1665, the Royal Society started the peer-review process via the journal Philosophical Transactions. This allows for scientific knowledge to be put under constant scrutiny given that new technologies offer new ways of assessing the veracity of an idea.

Footnote 2: In the original draft of the US Constitution, slaves who were of African descent were valued at 3/5th of the European population; this was largely done to increase the size of the political representation of the southern slave states whose population was less than that of the northern states.