The U. S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain (from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy)

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The U. S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain
One of a series of two articles on the U.S. Constitution

by Greg Coleridge and Virginia Rasmussen


"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." –James Madison (1751 - 1836)

We have a big problem in this country. It goes deeper than the vast array of serious issues many of us work tirelessly to remedy. At root it's not a political, economic, social or even ecological problem. It is a problem of belief – namely a belief that since our break with the King, We the People have had the power, or once had the power, to shape our own lives and that of our communities and country.

Many cling to a faith in these late 18th Century ideals and doctrines, taking pride in a more than 200-year celebration of them. The result of this unexamined faith is an avoi dan ce of the mutual learning and work required to explore the good and the bad of our founding story. It has prevented making real the best of Revolutionary Era possibilities.

The daily babel of information, opinion, assertion and distortion, deepens people's confusion. Lawrence Goodwyn, in his book, The Populist Moment, holds that "we are culturally confused and cannot even imagine our confusion. ...we are culturally organized by our society... not to understand the prerequisites of democracy itself." This leaves us a naive and apolitical people, uncurious about the world, unaware of or indifferent to how the United States affects other lands and peoples.

In this article we will take the measure of the Constitution's intentions and briefly explore the story behind its authors and their times. We plan a follow-up article in a future By What Authority, hoping to draw from our readers those issues and questions they would like to see at the center of a second Constitutional Convention and the drafting of a new Constitution.

The Dangers of Make-Believe

We need to be clear-eyed about who the Founding Fathers were, what they intended, and what "the other" Founding Brothers and Sisters believed, the ones who lost the day. Being losers, their thinking quickly disappeared from our history books, their sense of the possible lost to us. This loss feeds today's confusion and starves our public imagination.

The nation's founding beliefs have held us captive for generations. They have been effectively used to rally the crowds gathered before 4th of July podiums; to claim a unique democratic heritage that survives to the present day; to justify our judging the democratic legitimacy of every other nation and our intervention, even invasion of other countries on behalf of a democracy and "freedom" we profess to understand and to practice.

There are, of course, positive features to be found in the original Constitution. These include:

- prohibiting the United States or any state from granting titles of nobility;
- guaranteeing to each state a "Republican Form of Government;"
- entitling the citizens of each state all the "Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States;" and
- requiring no religious test as a "Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States ."

The U.S. Constitution represented a revolutionary shift in governance – the concept that a set of agreements can "lead the way" rather than a single person based on bloodline, military conquest, or "anointment from God." It has been heralded as the only shield in the nonviolent struggle against trespasses on our liberties by the USA Patriot Act, government spying on citizens in search of terrorist links, the inhumane torture of prisoners, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus for detainees in the "war on terrorism." Habeas corpus grants prisoners access to the courts to determine the lawfulness of their detention. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.poclad.org/bwa/Winter07.htm (scroll down a bit)

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