A syndicated columnist [ASC] wrote a column Sunday where he
made some charges about our Constitution and the founding of our country that I
believe need to be answered. These charges
are not unique to him. You will hear
them again and often if you at least try to know what’s going on in the world.
He believes that our Constitution is flawed, not less-than-perfect
flawed, but in a major way such that it needs to be either replaced or revised
in significant ways. Flawed such that
our nation was founded on bad ideas that make our whole history suspect.
ASC identifies six of these ‘flaws’, and they need to be answered.
1)
ASC believes our
Constitution was racist, “because neitherblack or Native Americans were allowed
the same rights as whites.
First of all, there is nothing in the Constitution that
denies them those rights. Secondly,
Native Americans weren’t living under our Constitution. Not because we denied them that privilege, but
because they had their own nations. Even
now, they are United States citizens, but they are autonomous nations within
our own. We are limited to what we can make
them do.
Blacks had the same rights under the Constitution as whites.
But then why were they still slaves?
That’s more a question for the Declaration of Independence than
the Constitution. The Declaration
recognizes that all human beings have unalienable rights given to them by God. They could have been more specific if they
intended a narrower definition of ‘all.’
But the colonies had free states, and it had
slave states. They could have created
one new nation or two. They chose
one. It eventually required a Civil War
to get all the states on the same page here, and that still did not resolve all
the issues. But the fault is not in the
Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The fault is with people. People seldom live up to their ideals.
2)
ASC believes that our
Constitution upholds slavery, though he is not clear exactly how it does
this. Perhaps it is “the outsize
political power granted to slave states.”
This is a common mistake that is constantly repeated but
never really explained.
It has to do with the 3/5 clause that says essentially that blacks
are counted as 3/5 of a white person when counting people for legislative
representation. Critics contend that
this shows disregard for black people and gives slave states additional representation
in Congress. On the contrary, slave
states got less representation than they wanted, not more. If blacks were counted at 3/5, then the total
population of the state used to determine legislative representation is smaller
than if they were counted as full persons.
Does this demean black people? Not at all.
The Founders were essentially saying to the slave states, you’re not
giving them full participation in society, then you shouldn’t get full
participation in Congress. The Founders sought
to diminish the influence of the slave states in Congress, and this was the
compromise they reached that did that.
3)
ASC believes that the
Constitution gives second-class citizenship to women, “the exclusion of women,”
but again he doesn’t explicitly say how.
I have read other sources that say the same thing, and they
focus on the statement in the Declaration of Independence that says that all
men are created equal. Well, what about
women?
I can only attribute that thinking to the dumbing down of
our schools and the politization of everything in our country.
The word ‘man’ has been used to refer to humans of both
sexes for all of English language history until the last few decades when people
started being offended by the idea. We
used to speak of mankind without anyone ever thinking that women weren’t
included. Anyone who thinks the Declaration
of Independence isn’t speaking of women when it states that all men are created
equal is either uneducated, dumb, or intentionally political.
4)
ASC believes that the early
addition of Amendments to the Constitution proved that it was a flawed document
from the beginning.
In truth, the Founders debated whether the Constitution
should include a list of these inalienable rights. They were concerned that if they were named,
people would soon or eventually think that those rights came from the government
and not from God. We are seeing that
today.
So, yes, the first ten Amendments are called the Bill of
Rights. And, no, they are not a “revision”
of the Constitution.
5)
ASC believes that the electoral
system was faulty and therefore further evidence that the Constitution was a
highly flawed document. The Founders
were apprehensive about the rise of political parties, but they pretty much
expected it. That rise caused the need
for a modification of the electoral college, but that was like calibrating a
machine once you get it going. That
doesn’t mean the machine is flawed, but it just needs to be tuned to the circumstances.
6)
ASC believes that the
undemocratic nature of the Senate is a flaw.
The truth is, the Founders did not want a pure Democracy. If they did, they wouldn’t have even needed a
Senate. If the Senate was run just like
the House, why even create one? It would
be redundant. The Senate was there to
preserve the rights and integrity of the States. That was their intention. That’s a concept that is being ignored a lot
today, actually for a hundred years with the direct election of Senators by the
17th Amendment. That does not
mean the original Constitution is flawed.
It just means that people today either don’t know the original intention,
or they want to change the intention.
ASC believes that recognizing all these faults of the
Founders and the founding documents is good for our country. Except that there is enough here, if everything
is accepted as given, to undermine confidence in the basic goodness of our
country and so give support to those who want to radically reinvent our
country.
These are not minor issues, and at some point, every one of
us will need to decide whether the United States is a country that must be
defended or upended.
