With election approaching,
The Constitution of the United States of America. Is as always a hot topic.
Arguably one of the greatest political documents ever written, certainly one of the most quoted, and probably the single most important document to an American citizen, it outlines not only how the US is supposed to be governed, it is a profound statement about the men who wrote it and about the truth.
Lets start with a simple question. How many times does the Constitution clearly define the USA as a
Democracy, in fact, narrow the question. How many times does the word Democracy appear in the Constitution. A grand total of zero.
Democracy is a general term for a system of government by which political sovereignty is retained by the
people and either exercised directly by citizens or through their
elected representatives. That sounds like us so it must be us right? In a general way it is. However, if any democracy is not carefully legislated to avoid an
uneven distribution of political power with balances such as the
separation of powers, then a branch of the system of rule is able to accumulate power in a way that is harmful to democracy itself.
Now when we talk about the founding father we are actually talking about a lot of people. But the men who wrote the Constitution are often referred to as the "Framers" and this list is pretty short. According to Joseph J. Ellis, this concept emerges in the 1820s as the last survivors died out.
George Washington was always the dominant figure. He was joined by
John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson, and after that,
James Madison,
Alexander Hamilton,
Benjamin Franklin,
John Jay,
George Mason,
Samuel Adams, and others.
Ellis goes on to call them an aggregate of semi-sacred figures whose particular accomplishments and
singular achievements were decidedly less important than their sheer
presence as a powerful but faceless symbol of past greatness.
These guys were a bunch of rich bankers, land barons, and slave owners, not saints. But they were also learned men. They understood the perils that laid before them, and perhaps in each other, they saw a reflection of themselves and understood, given enough rope they would hang us all.
Now no great man is going to write himself out of history, or his fortune, or his power. That would be just stupid. So they looked to a time when great mean could rule even if they were evil, and the people could have a say and things got better over all in every way.
Since most of the history of the world comes to of from the Roman perspective and most of the greatest prosperity in the Roman Empire came during the time of the
Republic. But like any Democracy, again there were pitfalls and again the pitfall was men like them so the created a
Triumvirate and they gave 1 thirds of it to the people, 1 third to the law and by way of tighter controls kept a third for men like them. Because a pure Democracy is mob rule, and while a person is smart people are stupid.
Article V gave
Congress the power, "
whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary" to add stuff to this stuff handing the power the people by way of the legislative branch. And not to be ignored
James Madison introduce 10 amendments to Congress and these are known as the
Bill of Rights because he knew that if basic rights and protections where not bound irrevocably to the constitution then men like him would destroy it.
An important reason why people could choose their society to be organized as a
republic is the prospect of staying free of
state religion. People call this a
Christian nation and perhaps you could use this term to describe all of these men, but it's a big word. Then as now people had held different beliefs and history has told us the damage one institution can have on another. So in the
First Amendment The two are separated, and this freedom of church and state is bound forever with the prohibition of government to abridge he freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of
grievances.
People have elaborate arguments and the courts have made rulings and that's just wonderful because you have probably never read the Constitution. The words are very clear and even with the Bill of Rights it's an extremely short document. It's not really something that needs to be interpreted, it just needs to be read.
Why did they do all of this? Because Democracy is a big word that has spelled death and corruption across the world and through the reaches of time. Welcome to the Republic.
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