A Good Idea That Should Be Tried

Dear Chuck,

Happy 240th Independence Day.

Today I'd like to address the chapter in your book entitled "The Case Against Freedom." I have two quotes that express my opinion of freedom and democracy. One apocryphal, the other documented.

1. Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
2.  “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” ― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

You end the chapter by stating that someday, people might look back on our Constitution and how people's devotion to it may end up being regarded someday as our nation's fatal, tragic flaw. How it will not be our disagreements which do us in, but our agreements.

You, sir, hit the nail right on the head. Like Gandhi, I believe that freedom and democracy are such good things that the American people should try them out sometime. And like Chesterton on Christianity, I believe that it isn't that democracy doesn't work, it's that it hasn't been even attempted.

I am about as fond of our nation, its founders, and its form of government as a person can be. I have repeatedly called the Declaration of Independence the best thing ever written in English, and I consider what happened in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to be the best event of the second millennium of the Common Era. I view the Constitutional Convention as something so amazing, so phenomenal, every generation should get to experience something like it.

If the American people truly loved the Constitution, they would not be satisfied with just one. If the American people truly loved democracy, by now we'd be on our sixth or seventh constitution, maybe our tenth or eleventh.

Not counting uncodified ones, the United States Constitution is the oldest currently in use and the only one adopted before 1800. Only seven other sovereign states have constitutions adopted before 1900: The Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Argentina, Luxembourg, and Tonga. One hundred forty-seven other nations have constitutions dated since then. The UK, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have uncodified ones. True, the twentieth century was a time of geopolitical upheaval which may never be matched, but nations abolish old forms or government and adopt new ones even in peacetime.

You want to look at the present as if it were the past? Try this:

"Those lazy Americans. They thought one document was going to guide them forever. Why didn't they realize that they could have a new document just by having two thirds of their state legislatures calling for a convention to make one?

"They could have had conventions to debate amendments, to propose changing Congressional powers, to alter the President's duties, to give the Supreme Court better guidelines, to do anything. Were they afraid that by adopting a new constitution, they would lose rights? Did they not realize that anything from an old constitution could be incorporated into a new one? That freedom of speech and abolition of slavery, to name two amendments, could carry over?

"The United States was a nation that was told, 'You have a republic, if you can keep it.' The people apparently thought the republic would keep itself."

Best,

Dan