We the People…

Posted by Marc Hodak on September 17, 2007 under History | 4 Comments to Read

Today in 1787, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia put their names to their new creation. The Constitution was a remarkable document in several ways. First, it’s short. At 5,000 words, it may be the shortest national constitution ever written. Our Founding Fathers understood the virtue of keeping it simple. People have to understand the rules if they are to accept them, let alone abide by them.

In contrast, the proposed E.U. constitution was about 150,000 words. Few understood it what it actually said. Its length and jargon was an insult to a free and educated people. It went down in flames. I’d like to think that the example of our short, relatively transparent document was partly responsible for that.

Much of our Constitution’s power came from its support by a literate, propertied class upholding a heritage of personal and economic freedom. If it had been drafted outside of this context of the highly evolved social institutions it sought to support, the Constitution would have likely have ended up as merely 5,000 words on a piece of paper. Consider this cheap imitation:

The Constitution guarantees all Frenchmen equality, liberty, security, property, public debt, freedom of worship, public schooling, public relief, unrestricted freedom of the press, the right to assemble in groups, and the enjoyment of all the rights of man.

But it’s difficult to take these words seriously as they were written at the onset of the Reign of Terror, where the state proceeded to murder 40,000 Frenchmen for things as simple as hoarding food or not showing enough revolutionary ardor in trials that could only yield verdicts of acquittal or death.

Or consider this phrase from another constitution:

In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: 1. freedom of speech; 2. freedom of the press; 3. freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; 4. freedom of street processions and demonstrations.

The only people who believed these words meant anything were certain naive Americans like Franklin Roosevelt, who very well may not have known that Uncle Joe was murdering tens of millions of his own people at the time even as he wrote those words.

Of course, the greatest thing about our constitution is that, despite its flaws and its reliance on highly imperfect people and institutions, it works. In the end, it delivers a government that is pretty much what the people want.