Remember When We Had a Constitution?
The “founding fathers” of the USA wrote us a constitution, a contract to unite the states with rules to make the new nation succeed.
The Constitution and the union it created have been greatly successful in the past in the past for several reasons. Some factors led to a people intensely loyal to the USA and its Constitution. One factor appears to be that we were so fortunate to have the Constitution written by a committee of geniuses.
The framework of laws set up by our Constitution made us the most prosperous nation on earth.
The Constitution was smart enough to limit its scope, and to limit the powers of the central government to those things that by their nature could not well be done by the individual states, and to let the states be free to govern themselves as they saw fit. This led to a healthy competition between the states: A state whose government did stupid or tyrannical things would see people and their businesses moving out. California, anyone? But the ability of people to “vote with their feet” tended to force the states to be careful what they did.
The Constitution was written clearly and succinctly, so that the average citizen could understand it and easily notice when anyone attempted to subvert it. Contrast this with modern acts of Congress that may have thousands of pages written by people who would prefer to not have people understand them. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Our legislators no doubt hate the “founding fathers” for making the Constitution understandable. It limits their powers way too much.
For more than century children would get to read the constitution in school, and we learned to respect it.
The Constitution did not allow the Congress to outlaw slavery. This great feat, perhaps the most the most import in our history, was accomplished by amending the Constitution in 1865.
The Constitution did not allow the Congress to prohibit the manufacture, sales, and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
This act, arguably the dumbest thing our government ever did, was accomplished by amending the Constitution in 1919. The prohibition of alcohol was revoked by amending the Constitution in 1933.
These events occurred when we respected the Constitution that guided the building of a great nation. The 10th amendment says that the federal government my not do anything not specifically authorized by the Constitution.
In more recent times, politicians no longer respect the Constitution. They prefer to simply ignore the 10th amendment, but more commonly their hypocrisy extends to “interpreting” the Constitution to find a “loophole”.
In 1942, President Roosevelt ordered that American Citizens of Japanese descent be “interned” in concentration camps. This, perhaps the most egregious violation of the constitutional rights of American Citizens in our history, was reversed by the Supreme Court, but not until 1945.
A great many other violations of the Constitution have been “rationalized” in succeeding years. One of the most notable is federal legislation concerning abortions. The Constitution clearly does not give the federal government any authority relating to abortions. The individual states likely have such authority, but any federal laws on this topic are clearly not valid.
Back in 2012, after the Saddam Hussein regime ended in Iraq, the Iraqi parliament wrote a new constitution for Iraq. One of our pundits remarked, “If they need a constitution, why don’t we give them ours? We aren’t using it anymore.”
Would we like to recover the constitution that made America great? If so, it won’t be simple. We would have to invalidate every law that violates the Constitution, and there have been a great many. We would have to indoctrinate our children again to respect and, yes, read the constitution.
Will it happen? I won’t hold my breath.
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