Political Science

If citizens are required to vote, the liberals among us would raise a howl of protest because the spirit in the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights comes with the choice to exercise those.  Without such choice left to the citizen who desires or does not desire to vote, we can no longer call this country a democracy.  Voting is a duty and a right, because it is a duty we are bound to do it for the sake of our country, but its being a right gives the individual a choice to vote or not to vote.  If voting will be really required, then as with all impositions there will be corresponding penalties for non-compliance. They can be anything between light to harsh, if failure to vote has been habitual.  Light penalties can be fines to community service.  Harsher penalties could be enrollment in a government class to none issuance of permit to travel in or out of the country.  Penalties are not meant only as disciplinary measures but as education on the importance of obeying laws and discharging duties.

If same-sex marriages were to be recognized in the entire country, same-sex couples would be happy.  What is there for others to stand in the way of their happiness  There may be religions that may oppose this unconventional practice.  However strong the ground they stand on they must realize that religious tolerance fought its way into the embrace of society and government.  Same-sex couples are similarly situated and they want their relationship accepted according to the rules of society.  Their cases are no different from the Blacks, the Women, and the Indians who wanted a part of the ground we are walking on and the sky above us all.  Same-sex couples have the same rights as the traditional couples in wanting to love one person, live with that one, share lifes joys and pains with, and pursue happiness together as one.  If same-sex marriages will ultimately be legalized, it will certainly prove that democracy prevails in this country.  Freedom of choice and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed by the State for as long as enjoyment of such is not destructive of others.

If the Constitution had banned slavery outright, history would have been written differently.  America would have remained a wilderness and the plantations would not have fed a nation.  Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been an ordinary pastor and Rosa Parks would have been a simple seamstress.  The nation would not have read the moving A Letter from a Birmingham Jail and it would not have learned from the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  There would be nothing significant on having a Barack Obama in the White House.  If slavery did not flourish, the music scene of America would not have known legends like Michael Jackson.  If slavery was banned outright, Americas equality and justice for all would not have been tested and it may never have proven to the world that America is indeed the Land of the Free.

The framers of the Texas Constitution protected those who file for bankruptcy with more than adequate cover from creditors even if they were creditors themselves.  Originally, the idea was to seek protection for families who lived under the harsh conditions of the frontiers.  Bankruptcy of homesteads destabilized these families and added up to their woes, which led them to flee to other nearby states.  A moratorium on the collection of debts was proposed by Stephen Austin and which was carried on from the original decree to the Constitution in the form of exemption from claims by creditors on lands.

After the war, the returning soldiers found their homesteads and plantations destroyed and their families desperate.  They were not much economic opportunities for them.  Texas was basically an agricultural state.  Except for the few with lands, the rest who stuck it out worked as farm laborers.  A bankruptcy during 1875, could have meant losing cattle as payment to creditors or fleeing to other states in search of better economic opportunities.