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The Daily Signal
The Continuing
Relevance of the Constitution
Larry Arnn
November 28, 2016
Public policy is often exciting and urgent. When a war begins or ends,
when votes are counted in an election, or when a major bill is passed,
everyone senses the magnitude of the event.
Some struggles end and new struggles begin. Consequences carry far into
the future. Compared to this, and especially given the way we think
today, the Constitution seems like a boring subject.
But how do we know whether the public policies we adopt are good? How
do we know whether the results of the election will be happy? How even
do we know if the war we have fought was worth it?
Those questions cannot be answered except by reference to things that
are outside the immediate excitement and even our immediate needs.
These larger and more enduring things cannot be understood without
understanding what we are, how we should live, how best over the long
term we can achieve a good life and be free. Somehow, urgent things
have to be judged in light of ultimate things.
The profoundest example of this is in our famous Declaration of
Independence. The people of America decided to form their own country.
It was an act of rebellion. It would carry a death sentence for many if
the revolution failed, and it did carry that sentence for many in the
subsequent war.
How remarkable that in this urgent moment, they would base what they
did upon the “laws of nature and of nature’s God.” They were looking
upward toward the eternal as they began their battle. That is one of
the essential reasons why they succeeded.
How can we remember to do this kind of thinking, when so many urgent
things press upon us and when hundreds of millions of us participate?
The answer is given best of all in history by the Constitution of the
United States, the partner of the declaration, prefigured in its middle
passages.
The purpose of the Constitution is to ground the government in the
people’s authority. It is also to make both we and our government
thoughtful. “It is our reason alone,” writes James Madison, “that must
be placed in control of the government. Our passions must be controlled
by it.”
Under the Constitution, it takes time to do big things: We must think
before we act. The Constitution divides power across the land and
between levels and branches of government; the people and the parts of
the government must cooperate if anything is to be done.
To get a majority, they must give reasons—out loud and in front of
millions. This encourages candor and discourages the rankest forms of
partisanship.
Yes, it is still partisan, but at our best moments we are better than
anywhere else. Moreover, the Constitution limits what we can do to each
other, teaching us self-restraint and independence.
In recent decades, our country has suffered public policy disasters. We
have fought many wars without decisive victory. We have spent many
trillions without removing the problems they were designed to remove.
We have become a great debtor nation with fewer reserves, even if our
reserves are still great.
These facts are connected to the compromising of our constitutional
practices. We have changed the way we make laws. The government is less
accountable, and the laws are more numerous and impossible to
understand.
We have made government more centralized, and so its proper central
functions—especially defense—are starved for resources.
As the government gets bigger, the people get smaller. They are
regulated in their private lives, obstructed when they strive,
subsidized in many cases into failure. This is just what the
Constitution was designed to prevent.
No institution has done more to describe and promote public policy from
the conservative point of view than The Heritage Foundation. It was
born decades ago for specifically this purpose. It has always had an
interest in the Constitution.
Now, it is bringing together all of its efforts relating to that great
document into the Institute for Constitutional Government, launching
Nov. 29, to achieve better focus. As a friend of the Constitution and
of Heritage, I am proud of this.
It can only be good. Our freedom is at stake. We will not save it
without restoring our Constitution.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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