Everybody loves the Constitution
By Jim Surber

If one bit of common ground exists today in this country’s polarized political climate, it’s that everybody loves the Constitution.

“Conservative or Liberal, we are all constitutionalists,” wrote Pres. Barack Obama. “The Founding Fathers fought and bled for freedom and then crafted the most miraculous political document ever conceived, our Constitution,” said Sen. Ted Cruz.

We proudly state that the US is governed by the world’s oldest written constitution that is still in use. This in spite of other icons of the eighteenth century-- like travel by horse and leech-based medical treatment-- that have been replaced by improved models. Ironically, Thomas Jefferson felt any constitution should expire after nineteen years and said, “If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”

Today, we still struggle with the same problems as the Founders. “How insulated should elected officials be from the demands of the people?” “How should power be divided among the federal and state governments?” “What rights of the individual must be protected against the claims of the government/”

The Constitution gives no clear answers to these questions, because there was no consensus among the Founders.

It was prepared in secret in 1787, behind locked doors guarded by sentries. The core challenge of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was to persuade representatives of the states to surrender some of the power given them under the old Articles of Confederation, in order to make a stronger national government. Because of this, the delegates devoted most of their attention to the rights of states, not of individuals. The Bill of Rights was not adopted until four years after the Constitution.

The convention nearly collapsed several times as smaller states refused to give up their powers, fearing their interests would be overrun by those of the larger states. The young republic was saved by an agreement that there would be two bodies of Congress, one based on population (House) and one based on states (Senate). Senators were to be chosen by the state government, not the voters, and this held until the seventeenth amendment in 1913.

But the delegates faced a far tougher problem with slavery. While slaves were not deemed citizens and could not vote, Southern states demanded that they be included in their population to boost their representation in the House. Northern states felt they should not count at all. The negotiated solution, to count a slave as 3/5 of a person, shows the shameful reality that they were openly judged as less than fully human.

Like the fiscal challenges of today’s lawmakers, the delegates chose to “kick the can farther down the road,” and it increasingly festered until the Civil War, three quarters of a century later. A war some historians call the “last battle of the American Revolution.”

For these and other reasons our Constitution is also known as the “Bundle of Compromises.”

Benjamin Franklin made a suggestion at the beginning of the convention that the sessions be opened with a prayer. The delegates refused to accept the motion stating that there was not enough money to hire a chaplain. Continental debt at that time was about $50 million. There is little difference today, except that 226 years have gone by and zeroes have been added to the debt.

There are two major schools of thought on the U.S. Constitution. One argues that it is an outdated structure that should not be allowed to inhibit actions necessary to meet the needs of a modern society. The other is that only a “strict constructionist” reading, and respect for the Framers’ “original intent” should be allowed.

The problem with these two views is that neither is logically consistent or honest.

But for many, the U.S. Constitution is like a secular Bible, with people using different parts to justify whatever their desired positions already are. Instead of letting the words of the Constitution guide their governing, they let their governing preferences dictate how they interpret the words.

The word “democracy” does not appear once in the US Constitution, but the term “others” is used to describe ethnic minorities.

The modern Republican Party asserts itself most clearly in the House, where partisan redistricting has changed the political temperament of many members. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is just fine under the Constitution.

“Obamacare,” a most controversial product of Democrats, has also been ruled constitutional in spite of questionable and apparent conflicts with the document.

Understanding the Constitution is to understand the need for great caution when considering an amendment. Every year, more than 100 amendments are proposed, and most never even get out of congressional committee. They range from hotly debated issues such as prohibiting flag burning to an amendment that would allow the public to repeal laws by popular vote.

There is good reason that the Founders required a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, plus approval of three-fourths of the states, to enact a constitutional amendment. Many amendments are products of the time, reflecting popular sentiment in a given year or period.

Laws can be enacted and changed with the political winds. The Constitution should not be so altered. As evidence of its continued flexibility, the Constitution has only been changed seventeen times since 1791.

Today, it is very hard to imagine owning slaves or prohibiting women from voting; but that is precisely how the Constitution was interpreted for many years, before being changed by two amendments.

We wonder what might be drastically changed in the future, in a way that those in that future will not understand how it could be any different.

As people continually debate whether things are constitutional or unconstitutional, perhaps a highway analogy is in order. The Constitution is like guardrails. It keeps us from going clear off the road and gets us back on, sometimes bruised and beaten. It is not a traffic cop that keeps us in a “correct” lane of travel by penalizing us when we veer right or left.

Politics are about conflict, in the eighteenth century just as in the twenty-first. Nobody argued more about the defining principles of America than the Framers of the Constitution. They argued both sides of the most powerful issues in American history such as slavery, states’ rights, and central government. They argued, and came to no specific agreement.

Their legacy is a document which was the product of compromise. The carefully-chosen 4,400 words is the oldest and shortest-written Constitution of any major government in the world.

With limited changes, the Constitution has overseen our growth from weak and scattered colonies and taken us through crises that might have broken other nations. Whether it is the peaceful transfer of power after a president resigns or protecting the right of a free press to call for the resignation, the Constitution is still the anchor.

Everybody loves the Constitution, and they should.