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May 1, 2008

Our flexible Constitution

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The above paragraph as drafted and ratified nearly failed to live up to its promise. It was written by wealthy, influential businessmen, soldiers and holders of large pieces of land, many of whom could trace their heritage to Europe by a single generation, two at the most.

The phrase, “We the people of the United States,” speaks of those people, not all the people who were residents of the states that had just united themselves into a Confederation and were building it into a democratic republic.

It did not include the natives who greeted the men and women who landed at Jamestown, Roanoke Colony, Saint Augustine and Plymouth. It did not include the women of the loose Confederation of colonies, which had just become states.

It did not “secure the blessings of liberty” to the slaves who were being brought in the holds of ships, nor the Native Americans who held this land between the Atlantic and Pacific long before the feet of Europeans, Asians, Africans and those of other cultures touched our shores, nor the women, often considered ineducable and good only for house-keeping and child-bearing, nor the indentured servant and their prosperity.

Yet, the preamble of the United States Constitution stands since June 21, 1788, when its ratification became official with New Hampshire being the ninth of the 13 states to ratify it.

But those wealthy, influential landowners may have outsmarted themselves. Instead of a document guaranteeing those blessings of liberty upon themselves only, they wrote a document that stood as a flexible, living law, giving rights and blessings that were perhaps never dreamed of by the signers.

One founder laying the seeds that gave the document flexibility was Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts delegate to the convention, said just after its completion, “I am exceedingly distressed at the proceedings of the Convention — being ... almost sure, they will ... lay the foundation of a Civil War.”

I’m not sure on what that distress was based, but Gerry’s prediction came true about 70 years later.

Other pundits have spoken on democracy:

“Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.”

— Walter Winchell



“Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru



“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr



“In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.”

— Norman Cousins



So here we are in the 221st year after the ratification of the document that rules this nation, a document that was designed to be so flexible that it can fit into any stage of the nation’s development, and a document that constantly divides us regarding our interpretation of it.

So this week I sign off with the words of signer Benjamin Franklin, “I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”



© MMVIII, V.H. & C.K. Greene

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