I can think of nothing more dangerous to our survival than a new Constitutional Convention
Mr. Sunstein, even if I agreed with the main thrust of your arguments against the present Constitution—and I don’t—the dangers of convening a new Constitutional Convention under contemporary conditions far outweigh the benefits you predict, even if they were all to come to fruition.
The politicians alive today are not wise enough, nor trustworthy enough to rewrite our Constitution. The milieu of the founders, and those who were the driving force behind the Constitution, were far superior to those we would have to depend on today. If there are faults in the Constitution-- and if there are, they are few-- better to live with them then the inevitable mess our feckless politicians leading an Oprah nation would make of that document.
I love my children too much to ever wish such a fate on them as a rewrite by my contemporaries of this noble document.
In his review of your book for tnr.com, Cass Sunstein referred to untoward reverence to the Constitution. Mr. Sunstein writes, "We learn...to revere the Founding Fathers, who are sometimes described as if they had been touched directly by God."
To that I say, show me one contemporary government document written as magnificently as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution itself, and I will withdraw--or at least temper-- my reverence.
It is the inferior temperament of our times that gives particular pause. And a clear lack of wisdom amongst most of those in office that drives our admiration for the Founders. We are a devolved nation, a people much inferior to the best of the 18th Century we were uncommonly fortunate to have gathered with a long gaze toward the welfare of their posterity.
In the immortal words of Dan Ackroyd, "We are not worthy" to muck with the Constitution.
The people who wrote the Constitution had 13 years earlier put their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" on the line to wrest the Colonies away from the Crown and to create a new nation. There are none today-- at least not among the political class frequenting K Street-- who have done any such thing.
The Founders earned the right to create the Constitution. Time has proven their wisdom and prescience to have been so extraordinary that it is not for nothing that, in reviewer Sunstein’s supposition, that many believe the Founders "...had been touched directly by God."
I am inclined to agree that belief is correct.
Those portions of the Constitution that could use modification-- most pressingly how the nation's leadership could be quickly and democratically reconstituted in the event of a terrorist "decapitation" attack-- can be handled through the amendment process.
By the way, if you look at almost all other constitutions, including those of our states, as well as those of nations that have them.
All of them are long, windy documents with none of the elegance and sophistication of our own. They usually go into far more detail on trivial matters that don't belong in a constitution. Our Constitution is a great work of political art on a plane with the best of Shakespeare or the most moving and ageless psalms in the Bible. Anything that would be produced to day, as Mr. Sunstein reminded us, in the age of the blog, would be a nauseous can of special-interest offal.
And as to what that which is according to the review, the central target of your criticism, the Senate and the Electoral College were both quite deliberate. And are just as apt conceptually today as in 1789. We are meant to be a republic not a democracy. The Founders knew very well that a democracy would not last long, because none ever had.
More to the point, we were also meant to be a federation, with the rights of the states and influence of the states, most particularly the smaller less populous ones, to be preserved.
Some may think that States Rights is a discredited concept, but unless we want to be France or Russia where all power is highly centralized, then it is important to preserve the ability of states with small populations to resist and check some of the powers of the big states and the central government, through their 2 senators, and by their out of proportion aggregate importance in the electoral college.
The politicians alive today are not wise enough, nor trustworthy enough to rewrite our Constitution. The milieu of the founders, and those who were the driving force behind the Constitution, were far superior to those we would have to depend on today. If there are faults in the Constitution-- and if there are, they are few-- better to live with them then the inevitable mess our feckless politicians leading an Oprah nation would make of that document.
I love my children too much to ever wish such a fate on them as a rewrite by my contemporaries of this noble document.
In his review of your book for tnr.com, Cass Sunstein referred to untoward reverence to the Constitution. Mr. Sunstein writes, "We learn...to revere the Founding Fathers, who are sometimes described as if they had been touched directly by God."
To that I say, show me one contemporary government document written as magnificently as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution itself, and I will withdraw--or at least temper-- my reverence.
It is the inferior temperament of our times that gives particular pause. And a clear lack of wisdom amongst most of those in office that drives our admiration for the Founders. We are a devolved nation, a people much inferior to the best of the 18th Century we were uncommonly fortunate to have gathered with a long gaze toward the welfare of their posterity.
In the immortal words of Dan Ackroyd, "We are not worthy" to muck with the Constitution.
The people who wrote the Constitution had 13 years earlier put their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" on the line to wrest the Colonies away from the Crown and to create a new nation. There are none today-- at least not among the political class frequenting K Street-- who have done any such thing.
The Founders earned the right to create the Constitution. Time has proven their wisdom and prescience to have been so extraordinary that it is not for nothing that, in reviewer Sunstein’s supposition, that many believe the Founders "...had been touched directly by God."
I am inclined to agree that belief is correct.
Those portions of the Constitution that could use modification-- most pressingly how the nation's leadership could be quickly and democratically reconstituted in the event of a terrorist "decapitation" attack-- can be handled through the amendment process.
By the way, if you look at almost all other constitutions, including those of our states, as well as those of nations that have them.
All of them are long, windy documents with none of the elegance and sophistication of our own. They usually go into far more detail on trivial matters that don't belong in a constitution. Our Constitution is a great work of political art on a plane with the best of Shakespeare or the most moving and ageless psalms in the Bible. Anything that would be produced to day, as Mr. Sunstein reminded us, in the age of the blog, would be a nauseous can of special-interest offal.
And as to what that which is according to the review, the central target of your criticism, the Senate and the Electoral College were both quite deliberate. And are just as apt conceptually today as in 1789. We are meant to be a republic not a democracy. The Founders knew very well that a democracy would not last long, because none ever had.
More to the point, we were also meant to be a federation, with the rights of the states and influence of the states, most particularly the smaller less populous ones, to be preserved.
Some may think that States Rights is a discredited concept, but unless we want to be France or Russia where all power is highly centralized, then it is important to preserve the ability of states with small populations to resist and check some of the powers of the big states and the central government, through their 2 senators, and by their out of proportion aggregate importance in the electoral college.
posted by ChanRobt at 11:54 PM
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