> All true (though Thomas Paine had a broader scope). And yet, despite the
> blood-drenched corrupt white hands that forged that document, and the
> Bill
> of Rights, both remain in many ways quite radical -- certainly in
> slave-owning time, and, as Ashcroft and Ridge roll along, increasingly
> so in
> ours.
I think that what is more important than the fact that Native Americans, slaves, women, etc., were not represented in the original constitutional convention is the fact that all of these groups and more managed to fight their ways to gaining their political rights within the constitution.
The important lesson to be drawn, I think, is that we don't get anywhere just sitting around grousing that "those rich white guys didn't invite us" -- we have to be willing to support a hard struggle to invite *ourselves*, and once we get our rights, we have to struggle just as hard to *use* them. "Use them or lose them" is the watchword.