Essentially, the question is if we wanted a nation or not. I firmly believe that if the old nation had not unified under a strong government close to that time in history, it would not have survived. The Constitution was a good shot; I know that some here differ, but there was no viable alternative with a puff of momentum.
Some historians has said that the US may have split into as many as 4 nations. Who knows?
Was the timing good? What if the Colonies had waited another 10-20 years; would we have had the great land purchases that enabled the western lands to be newer States? Would Spain and England have asserted more influences in the Southern settlements? Would we have had Texas, or fought in WWII (Hawaii) for that matter?
Hamilton makes it sound easy to call a Convention for Proposing Amendments. In the essays accompanying Federalist #43, the authors have explained just how difficult that has turned out to be, and just how easily Congress has managed to avoid such a convention call. Based on the information contained in those essays and Hamilton’s final summation, would you fear the calling of a Convention for Proposing Amendments, and why?
I would fear the call to a convention with all my heart.
I do not trust the political powers present today. They have the backing of a populace that is woefully undereducated (falsely educated?) on the matters of government. Moreover, they are consumed with the idea of getting benefits from our government that were the result of the labors of others.
Just think, for a moment, the discourse that would be present on these forums if we could have taken some citizens from 1787 and placed them in front of a computer for a debate! It would have put the current crop of politicians to shame.....especially that Weiner guy from New York. He would have probably shut his mouth at Weehawken.
I grin when I think of such a debate; but shake my head when I acknowledge the meager (by comparison) debate that has followed the essays on the wonderful project.
Thanks for your work, gentlemen. May it last for decades.
Purely from the standpoint of mechanics, I don’t. Whatever amendment proposals may emanate from a Convention for Proposing Amendments under Article V, it would take the legislatures (or ratifying conventions, if Congress so chose) of 38 states to get that amendment into the Constitution. All it would take is 13 states to say no, and that amendment is dead.
I do not trust the political powers present today. They have the backing of a populace that is woefully undereducated (falsely educated?) on the matters of government. Moreover, they are consumed with the idea of getting benefits from our government that were the result of the labors of others.
This cuts to the heart of Glenn Beck’s argument: Are the people capable of governing themselves? If you are correct, they are not. If they are not, then we will be governed either by some kind of socialist/union dictatorship, or by a military strongman – an officer at the Army War College called him General Brutus in a scholarly paper – who will establish a military dictatorship. In neither outcome does the Constitution survive.