Guarding the Constitution

 

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document they had created.  The Constitution, even more than the Declaration of Independence, makes us the finest country in the world.  Many of these names are familiar to us (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin…) others are unknown (George Read, Jared Ingersoll…), but they all get the credit for this amazing document.

The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world.  We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.  If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God I would simply ask them how so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.   Our founding fathers had the vision to not only govern themselves but govern a country that they could not yet imagine yet believed would prevail.

The Constitution of the United States is like a good parent.  Knowing we were imperfect in our nascent form it has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older.  The result is that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.  The miracle of this document is that it changes with the times.  The three branches of our government work together while standing alone.  While our laws must carry the weight of immediate and complete enforcement, the amendment of the laws must also be fluid and responsive.  Laws that cannot be enforced produce anarchy and laws that cannot be changed calcify into totalitarianism. 

If governed by good and intelligent people we should be able to provide the best decisions at the time, given the best facts available, and the confidence to know that we can change our mind when needs and circumstances change.  This isn’t flip-flopping it is adjusting to better data.  Laws that got us where we wanted to be in 1830 didn’t function well in 1930 and won’t work in 2030.   

For example, until 1913 the citizens of this country did not directly vote for their Senators.  Article I Section 3 of the Constitution states that, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof...”  Not until the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was passed would the citizen of the United States directly elect their senators.  Both the original decision and its amendment had good and justifiable reasons.  Times change and we changed.  

The glue that holds our Republic together is the separation of powers within the Constitution.  In the words of James Madison in Federalist No. 10, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  Ambitious, unscrupulous and/or undisciplined people feel no obligation to control themselves. In such a regime, our most fundamental freedoms are in jeopardy.

This Constitutional discipline is something Donald Trump seems utterly unconcerned with.  Trump sees himself as a plutocratic dictator, unconstrained by the rule of law.   He considers those who love our Constitution to be suckers, losers, and expendable.  What is worse, he is being enabled in this desecration of the Constitution by Republicans who refuse to constrain him.  To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, this great country is only a Republic, if we can keep it.  Donald Trump is an existential threat and sworn enemy of the Constitution.  Everything he says, does and believes makes Satan smile. 

The Constitution is designed to protect us from enemies, both foreign and domestic.  It is a shield against tyranny, but like every shield, we have to hold it up to allow it to work. 

Guard the Constitution and keep the faith. 

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