Change made basketball and the U.S. Constitution better

ACHTUNG: This is not a fair and balanced story. It is an editorial by the editor.

The Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution and Dr. James Naismith have a lot more in common than you might imagine.

Both came up with a terrific, “game-changing” idea and it would have been a disaster (with apologies to Donald Trump) if their inventions would have remained stagnant after coming into being.

Their “inventions” were made about 100 years apart — the blueprint of our nation’s laws and the game of basketball. Yet even before it was adopted, the U.S. Constitution had 10 changes, or amendments, tacked on to it in order to have at least nine of the 13 original colonies approve it.

I learned by attending a Tea Party rally more than four years ago that many Americans believe our Founding Fathers came up with this terrific constitution inspired by God, and just like the Bible, it doesn’t need to be changed, it’s rock solid moral law that makes America greater than anywhere else.

Fast forward 100 years, to 1891 in Springfield, Mass., where Dr. Naismith invented the game of basketball in order to give his students physical activity over the winter months. If we would have insisted the game’s rules not be changed over the years, things certainly would have turned out very differently.

Through the years there were important tweaks:

• Eliminating the center jump after every basket.
• Introduction of “the paint,” that area in which offensive players cannot spend more than three seconds.
• Introduction of the three-point shooting arc.
• Improvements to the backboards holding the baskets.

And there have been many others, too numerous to mention here. Though some tweaks haven’t panned out, so many have made the game better and more exciting.

And so it is with the U.S. Constitution.

Though for its time it was unlike anything else, it has needed changes to grow with changing times. I shocked the Tea Partiers when I told them the original Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution applied only to free, white males at least 21 years of age, and landowners.

Voting rights for women, blacks and Native Americans were not granted in the original document nor the Bill of Rights. They were fought for and won by pressure groups such as suffragettes and abolitionists. They were not the result of lawmakers doing their jobs, they were the result of the will of the people overpowering the status quo.

So imagine where we would be if we allowed the U.S. Constitution to be stagnant, as changeless as canal water. It would be like imagining the game of basketball being played today just as Dr. Naismith originally intended. We must regard the constitution as a living, breathing and evolving document.

Yet so many of us are resistant to change, so much that there haven’t been any amendments to the constitution adopted since 1972, the one that granted 18-year-olds the right to vote. So it’s been 45 years without any changes, not even the elimination of the cancerous Citizens United decision of 2010 that has turned our politicial system into legalized bribery and circus free-for-all in campaigns every two years. The winner now doesn’t have the best ideas, he or she is the most recognized, or blessed with the best marketing and advertising machine.

The lessons of Charles Darwin are applicable here. Those who survive are not necessarily the strongest nor the smartest, but the ones who are able to adapt to changing conditions.