For John, BLUF: We were pretty lucky.
Per the blog site Mentalfloss we have the thoughts of Founding Father Ben Franklin on the day the Committee signed the new US Constitution.
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. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.Read the whole thing.I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.
On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility — and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.
Regards — Cliff
And thus the never-ending aim of providing a "more perfect union." We'll never get there and the reason is two fold. Humanity and freedom. Actually, as I look at it, I have the two reversed.
ReplyDeleteFreedom is NOT a national or even a societal concept that can be given or taken away by government or other bodies. It lives in the hearts of individuals and can likely never be completely erased. It is freedom that leads to the problem of humanity.
As Adams observes, with a group of folks, you get unity, but you also get their respective disunity. Only in free environments is one able to openly and forcefully express a dissenting viewpoint, one likely based on one's own selfish needs or perceived needs of those who placed him in such a position of relative power. This is one of the ground level realities of political parties....and one of the reasons that over the long haul....party unanimity will never be achieved. Parties are merely labels used to aggregate loose gaggles of very different folks based on a few "key" behavioral or intellectual characteristics. I believe most Republicans have, to their horror or sadness, discovered that there is no purity in the party. Many Reps are in fact more "democrat" that republican and thus the label of RINO.
So...the Constitution will never be perfect nor is it any sort of panacea for the operation of the great American society. It is however, a set of basic norms that must be followed so that freedom can continue to flourish both in and outside each American's heart.