In my previous post, I talked about WHY it is important to read and understand the Declaration of Independence; WHY it is important for our children to also know and understand.
What about the Constitution? What do you know about the Constitution? Why was it necessary for the new nation? What was wrong with our first attempt at government, under the Articles of Confederation? Again, the answer was written into the document itself; 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.
Under the Articles, there was no real federal, or national government. The Founding Fathers did not want to replace one tyrant with another, so they purposely left the national government very weak. An ineffective Congress existed, which couldn't even collect taxes to pay off the war debt or raise an army to protect the new nation; the states were squabbling with each other over trade and territory instead of cooperating; it looked as if the infant nation would fall apart. The leaders knew they had to do something, so another Convention was called in Philadelphia with the stated purpose of changing the Articles of Confederation.
Some of the men at the Convention knew, however, that the Articles could not satisfactorily be changed to create an effective government. BUT, they really wrestled with the idea of creating a strong central government; they had just fought a war to free themselves from a tyrannical one! The compromise would be to create a limited federal government, one with very restricted authority, preserving the rights of the people. That is WHY the Constitution contains a list of what the government is allowed to do, and why the Bill of Rights (amendments added after the Constitution was ratified) is a list of what Rights the people have, and what the government cannot do to us to take them away. The Constitution is a great, well-thought-out document that was designed to keep the government in check.
Well-thought-out? Great document? How can I say that when our Founding Fathers would only count slaves as three-fifths persons? Wow! That seems very racist of those rich, old, white, men, doesn't it? But what is the reality? WHY would they do that? Well, the North and the South couldn't agree on how to count slaves for the purposes of representation in the House of Representatives. Although the Southern slave owners considered slaves property (like horses and cattle), not people, the Southern states wanted to be allowed to count their slaves as people so they could have more influence in the Congress, and thus keep slavery and their way of life preserved forever. They also wanted slavery made legal in the Constitution. Those in the Northern states who wanted to end slavery did not want to count the slaves at all, giving more Representatives to the Northern states. After all, the slave owners considered their slaves to be property! They couldn't have it both ways! The North also wanted slavery outlawed in the Constitution.
So, in order to make sure the Union survived, a compromised was reached. Slavery would be legal (to appease the South), but the Articles dealing with slavery could be amended after 20 years (to appease the North - 20 years wasn't a long time), and all slaves would be counted as three-fifths persons for the purposes of representation (a compromise for both). The United States of America almost dissolved over the slavery question way back in 1787, a full 74 years before the Civil War! Only the wisdom of the men in the Philadelphia Convention averted the disaster.
Did you learn that in school? I know I hadn't heard that! My children hadn't either. And we've all heard about the rich, old, white, racist men who were our Founding Fathers. How they only counted black people as three-fifths person. And how evil that was....without any context. This demeans the rest of the process and the document to skew it this way. There are many, many provisions in the Constitution that our government can easily over-look, degrade, demean, corrupt, or just plain ignore...IF the citizens (that would be us!) do not read and understand them! Our government has been bending, stretching and violating the Constitution for years now. Do you know which provisions have been ignored?
When you don't understand the WHY of the Constitution...it just becomes just a boring old piece of parchment with absolutely no modern-day relevance! And, when you don't understand the WHY of the idea of America...it becomes just another nation among many with absolutely no differences!
"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." -- John Adams in a Letter to Abigail Adams (July 7, 1775)
No comments:
Post a Comment