The Constitution Is Only A Rough Draft

A Well Regulated Militia

This week's New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin notes that the Constitution is America's Holy Book, that both conservatives and liberals avow they are the true defenders of the founding fathers' holy words and their opponents are trying to thwart the intentions of those divinely inspired, bewigged 18th century gentlemen (and they were none of them peasants) who assembled in Philadelphia. 

In fact, as a law  professor named Sanford Levin has pointed out, the document set forth a plan which was a political compromise, with morality often absent, to wit, the enshrinement of slavery (with slaves, referred to as "other Persons").

In many ways, the political compromises which were made in the late 1700's still thwart us today:  A representative democracy, if that's what we are aiming for, should, ideally, represent the people who live in the nation rather than some artificial constructs, which are, after all, what states are. (There is a wonderful book about how states got their boundaries, and if ever you doubt the artificiality of states, read that.)

The notion of states ultimately stood in for real divides among the people of the nation:  In the 1800's states which raised cotton and kept slaves were different from states which did not. Today, there are rural to wilderness states with few people but lots of land and resources, and it is the people who control those resources and that land which get a commanding voice in the U.S. Senate. 

The idea, expressed by Orin Hatch of Utah, that the populous states of California and New York could rule Utah, Wyoming and Montana is horrifying to the people living in those states, who believe only they should control the water, the gold, the silver, the gas and oil on their "property." And that's, in essence, the idea of a state, the people in that geographic area have fenced off the land as "ours" and everyone else is trying to take their rights to use that land as they see fit. 

Toobin notes that in 1787 Virginia, the largest state, had eleven times the population of Delaware, the smallest. Today, California has seventy times more people than Wyoming. And yet, the people of Wyoming get to control resources, get to align themselves with other wilderness states to prevent meaningful gun control. 

If Mad Dog had his way, and if we really decided we need states, he would create a single state out of Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada. The Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and a part of Maryland from those suburbs up through Baltimore would form another. Upstate New York would become part of Vermont, and populations which share common concerns and problems would be bound together.  This would likely mean retrenchment every twenty years, but at least we could avoid the absurdity of Albany, New York controlling New York City.

If state boundaries were eliminated tomorrow, if we all became simply "Americans" then we could people in Idaho, they do not have a right to their AK 47 attack rifles and grenades.  

But Delaware, Rhode Island and likely Vermont and New Hampshire might not have joined the union if people in those states, who thought of themselves as being from those states, were told they would be represented according to their numbers rather than according to  their property.

In fact, those hallowed founding fathers did not trust the hoi polloi to govern themselves, so they created a Senate which could be controlled by the landed gentry, the wealthy and the well connected, and which could nullify whatever the rabble in the House of Representatives tried to enact as law.

We are not, and were never intended to be a democracy. "This has never been a democracy. This is a representative republic, with heightened democratic principles," Orin Hatch says. 

Through time, the revered checks and balances have thwarted change: For part of our history it was the Senate, which blocked emancipation of the slaves, then civil rights, then Clinton's health care reform.  Then there was the Supreme Court, which confirmed slavery in the infamous Dred Scott case, and which blocked changes to Jim Crow and recently made stealth political contributions a protected form of free speech. 

The government, as our founding fathers handed it to us was designed to accomplish little. That's what "checks and balances" is all about. 

That is why the Tea Party canonizes the founding fathers. If you believe government is bad, if you believe that government is best which governs least, well then, the Constitution is your Bible and Thomas Jeffferson and his fellow slave holders your apostles. 

All Men Created Equal. Except the Slaves

That may have worked well in the 18th century, when there was really very little which any government could do for its people other than to tax and wage wars against other governments. There were no medical schools to fund, no hope of curing cancer or infectious disease, no way of  doing any meaningful public health. They could build roads, locally, but there were no bulldozers, no bridges which could span large rivers, and no airports, no need for air traffic control. There were no automobiles to power with gas lines, and no internet, no computers, no mass communications beyond newspapers, no telegraph, no railroads, no labor unions (although we may soon join the 18th century in that respect) no hospitals which we would recognize as hospitals, no real pharmaceutical industry, no public education, and the few universities which did exist taught mainly Latin, Greek and theology. 

The men who signed that parchment with quill pens did make a giant leap in thinking: They recognized the idea you needed a king to govern was absurd. But then, they had seen England's Parliament.  They were, for the most part, ordinary men of their times, who found some extraordinary men, like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton to lead them.  What they cobbled together almost fell apart because they had sewn their fabric with the poisoned threads of slavery, states rights, property, male dominance, class suppression, aristocracy and indentured servitude. 

Lucky for us, Abraham Lincoln found his voice and his chance.

President Obama has been hamstrung by what those dead white men left him. 

So have we all.