"We the people...."

On this day 223 years ago, "We the people" became the recipient one of the greatest gifts of democracy ever presented upon the earth.

The U.S. Constitution remains a wonder of draftsmanship: explicit enough to get things done, yet flexible enough to allow for the shifting sands of history.  The drafters could have done a much more restrictive job of detailing what goes into a system of government, yet they didn't.  They created a document for all ages, as much as for their own.

It's not perfect:  many words by people far more eloquent than I have been spent in discussing its major failing -- the treating of millions of people as little better than property.  It would take 78 years for that injustice to be corrected.

Its greatest strength lies in the opportunity it provides for correcting its most egregious wrongs.  There is not enough protection for individual rights?  Add a set of amendments designed to safeguard each of us from the tyranny of the majority as enshrined in a representative government.  Slavery still allowed?  Amend the Constitution!  After a protracted and bloody war, true; but don't throw out the whole document and start anew.  Just add words which recognize that all men truly are created equal. *

Out of the twenty seven times the Constitution has been amended in over 200 years, only once has the country decided later that the amendment was a bad idea.  That's not a bad batting average.

The Constitution defines who we are.  The Declaration of Independence may have given birth to this nation, but it is the Constitution which gives it form and shape.

Happy Constitution Day, everyone.



*It still fails in one respect: the lack of a simple sentence which would read  "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."