Recently I had dinner with a friend of mine and we started talking about politics and current events. We discussed how dangerous the world has become and how we are in more harm today than pre 9-11. This is when he suggested "We should take a more extreme measure in our approach because the situation has become desperate." To which I said "Whatever we do we should still be within the limits of the constitution and I think we are over-stepping this quite a lot these days". That's when my friend said "Well perhaps that needs to change, how relevant is a document written 200 years ago, applied in today's context of world affairs? After all when the constitution was written there were only 13 states, Britain and France were the superpowers of the world, China and India were Isolationists, the Central Banking system did not exists, and the Republican and Democratic parties were hundreds of years from being established." These were persuasive points and they raised some concerning questions. How effective can a 200 year old document of governance be when the situation that it was written in is so politically, financially, socially, and morally different today?
I slipped into a deep thought for the rest of that night pondering such a provocative question…and I came to some conclusions.
It is my belief that the constitution is perhaps the greatest longstanding document of governing that has ever been written in history. Not even the Roman Empire ruled with such liberty, strength and egalitarianism. The founding fathers were very wise and possessed intellect hundreds of times greater than even the smartest of public policy writers in our generation. They were so smart that they understood they still didn't know very much. So they wrote a very powerful instrument for change inside the document giving flexibility that would still represent the changing values of a growing society in America, barring some basic principles like inalienable rights. I think the wisdom of the founding fathers and the constitution still has strong relevance in a diverse and conflicted world. Chaos was widespread in their time, just like in ours but their agenda wasn't to eliminate chaos from the world it was to minimize chaos for the American people. But that's just my perspective, what do you think? Does the constitution still hold relevance in handling issues like Iraq and Iran, the small or big government debate, social security, abortion, or many other issues?
1 comment:
The Constitution, which I have not studied since 7th grade, is brilliant because it is sets up our government as a system of checks and balances. The three branches are to serve as checks on the power of each other: the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Legislative. This works but sometimes it's a struggle, such as when the Judiciary takes on the powers that belong to the Legislature: example, in the contested 2000 election. Or when the Executive refuses to release information that should belong to the people through their elected representatives (as in Bush's move to bar access to a president's papers as long as he and his heirs want to hold them in secret). In other words, the Constitution needs constant protection from those who would abuse it. It protects our privacy and only the judiciary, not the executive branch, should make decisions about when wiretaps and eavesdropping are warranted to protect us from further attacks like 9/11.
Post a Comment