I posted this a day or two ago on another thread.
I believe in our Constitution. I think it is the greatest blueprint for good government ever written in any country, at any time, throughout history, and by a very wide margin. That document and the form of government it laid out and which developed, has inspired the majority of the rest of the world, scores of countries, on their own, without compulsion, to wish, to try, to follow suit. (Beginning with the French Revolution, proceeding to the countries of South America, continuing on through Europe and then most of rest of the world.) It laid out the first workable and enduring, and still the best, truly democratic, and free, form of government. It is a masterpiece beyond masterpieces. It is the crowning jewel of the Enlightenment. Because of it, and our respect and even reverence for it, we are the freest people in the world, in simultaneously the greatest and richest power in the world. The one stable pillar of strength and example which all the world looks to for help of all sorts, sometimes with resentment, but more often really with envy. It was remarkable, and unprecedented achievement, and never since exceeded.
Those who would make light of its intricately balanced requirements do so at our country's peril. That is why it, and no man or party, is properly the subject of the highest loyalties in this land. In the light of hindsight, again and again, the passions of the moment have proven unwise, and the Constitution wise, beyond measure.
It's great, its horrific, initial defect, the almost unspoken and ashamed allowance of slavery (in deference to the great power of the southern states, and in Virginia, their very leadership in the Revolution), was so internally contradictory with the rest of the document, and the Declaration of Independence that preceded it, that almost immediately that issue began tearing this country apart. That utterly inconsistent and horrific defect continued to do so for more than fifty years until the dreaded but long expected result, a civil war that took the lives of a great proportion of the young male population of the time (and far more lives than all our other wars before and since combined, even in absolute numbers and not to mention in percentages), became the inevitable result. And that defect was then reversed. And a related defect, the failure to extend to women the vote and thus full rights of citizenship, was later by a similar dynamic of correcting contradictions to the founding ideals, corrected as well.
The greatest, and perhaps only, defect of commission (as opposed to omission) in the sacred text of our democracy, was a late amendment which sought to impose on all a morality, and limitation on conduct, thought necessary for our moral health by most, but that was thoroughly opposed, ridiculed and resisted by many. Thankfully, prohibition was later removed from the document.
Doug
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