Jeff Mankoff - jeffrey.mankoff@yale.edu
Future plans: Mr. Mankoff hopes to work as a national security analyst, either for the US government or for a policy institute.
Posted on 09/23/2005 10:22:35 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
GUEST COLUMN | JEFF MANKOFF
Published Thursday, September 22, 2005
Putting an end to Constitution worship
This past Saturday was something called "Constitution Day," though, except for some obnoxious fliers around campus put up by the Orwellian-sounding Committee for Freedom, you can be forgiven for not knowing that.
Constitution Day is a new quasi-holiday foisted upon us by Congress at the behest of Sen. Robert Byrd to force schools receiving public money -- including Yale -- to set aside time on the anniversary of the document's adoption in 1787 to teach about the Constitution.
This holiday is another ridiculous example of the "sanctimonious reverence," as Thomas Jefferson termed it, in which many Americans hold the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Both documents no doubt played important roles in the American colonies' struggle to free themselves from British rule and establish a new nation. Recognizing them as crucial pieces of American history is one thing, but worshiping them like sacred texts goes too far.
The Constitution in particular needs to be stripped of much of the mystic awe surrounding it, since it continues to shape American political life, yet suffers from serious flaws. Many of these flaws could be corrected by wise legislation, if only legislators, and the public, were not so deeply attached to the Constitution that they cringe before any attempt to substantively alter it.
The Constitution, while laying the foundation for the creation of a great American nation, was also very much a product of its time. Though it has mostly aged well, the Constitution has also given us a rigid 18th-century political system not always well suited to the modern world. Even with its amendments, the document is fraught with problems too rarely acknowledged by politicians or the public.
As Yale political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, the Constitution is grossly undemocratic. Since Wyoming, with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, has the same clout in the Senate as California, with almost 34 million, each Wyomingite counts 68 times as much as each Californian. The Constitution is also responsible for burdening us with the Electoral College, a body designed to purposely undermine popular sovereignty. The 2000 election, when Al Gore outpolled George Bush but was denied the presidency by the Electoral College (with an assist by the Supreme Court), is the most recent example of 18th-century oligarchy trampling 21st-century democracy.
Besides being undemocratic, the Constitution is also, in places, just poorly written. Take the Second Amendment, which mentions the need for a well-regulated militia and conferring the right to bear arms. Because of the Framers' unclear wording, no one has been able to establish definitively whether this right belongs only to the militia or to individuals. The easiest and fairest solution would be to just rewrite the Second Amendment, but because the Constitution has taken on the aura of sanctity in our political culture, there is little likelihood of that happening.
Adhering to the Framers' "original intent," as many conservatives would have us do, is a recipe for oligarchy (which was, after all, what the Framers wanted). Creating the Electoral College and denying the vote to women, blacks and poor people were both part of the Framers' desire to keep power in the hands of people like themselves (and I have a sneaking suspicion many "strict constructionalists" would prefer things that way). The main alternative -- seeing the Constitution as a "living document" subject to constant reinterpretation -- is also anti-democratic, since it allows the judiciary to usurp power from the elected legislative branch. The Constitution needs changing, but it should not be up to the courts to change it.
Some of the Constitution's worst features have, it is true, been corrected by amendment -- though in the case of ending slavery and giving blacks the vote, the price was civil war. The Framers deliberately made changing the Constitution difficult, but at the price of a rigidity that has made the U.S. political system ossified and anachronistic. Jefferson argued that each generation should modify the Constitution to fit its own times, since "each generation has the same right of self-government [as] the past one." Jefferson's modest regard of the Constitution as an edifice in need of constant repair is a much better way of think of our nation's most important document than the sanctimony that has given us "Constitution Day."
[Jeff Mankoff is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the History Department.]
Jeff opposes "Constitution Worship", even though the Constitution has served us well for over 200 years with minor adjustments. I wonder if he feels the same about "Earth Worship", where every year we have schools and governments around the country celebrating "earth day" and worshipping the sanctity of the planet - they have a religious beleif that the Earth should exist in the condition that it would if we weren't here; isn't that even more a religion than believing in the constitution???
Then, of course, you disapprove of the US Senate also, since California and Rhode Island have the same number of Senators - two. Shouldn't California have many more Senators just to be 'fair'? The Electoral College is not 'undemocratic' as you stated, every State in the Union gets representation equal to the number of its Represenatives and Senators in Congress, the people of each of the States have an equal chance to vote for a particular Slate of Electors of their State - what could be more fair than this?
If you are objecting to the fact that 48 of the 50 States in the Union use a 'winner-take-all' solution to the allocation of their allotted Electors - that is a matter for each State Legislature to decide. There is nothing in the Federal Constitution which prevents States from allocating Electors based on a proportional plan, a district plan, 'winner-take-all' or even be selected directly by the State Legislature.
Your beef is with the State Legislatures, not the Electoral College. However, direct nationwide popular elections, heavens no. The Consititution was configured to have the qualified population vote directly for their Representative in the House and is the only Federal vote which was originally mandated by the Constitution. The Seventeenth amendment forced on the nation by the Populists now has the voters choose the Senators also in direct popular elections - a big mistake. Since the United States is a Federal Republic of 50 sovereign States, there should be no Federal national election for the office of President and Vice-President, the States are the ones to choose the holders of those Offices.
Can you think of one Federal Office which is selected by a direct nation-wide Federal office? There are none since we are a nation with dual sovereigns - State and Federal.
dvwjr
The Constitution is only as good as the people we elect to uphold and the judges they appoint to interpret it.
That's not very good these days.
Ha ha, great imitationm of a stupid left-winger. You just forgot the /sarcasm tag.
Great imitation of a guy who can't spell, you might want to remember yours too.
I may be wrong, but it looks like you're saying what the North did was unfair to the South, but I just may be misreading it.
Jeff Mankoff - jeffrey.mankoff@yale.edu
Future plans: Mr. Mankoff hopes to work as a national security analyst, either for the US government or for a policy institute.
No, I am pointing out that the much belittled "three-fifths" of a person mentioned in the Federal Constitution is usually ascribed to the 'evil' slave-holding South - which would have been happy to see slaves counted as a whole person, just as were women and childern. The provision should be tied to the Northern States.
You see, while slaves, women and childern all were counted in the census taken every ten years to allocated Congressional representation, only the white property-holding males were at first entitled to the Federal vote. The Northern States had wanted slaves counted as were Indians for the purposes of the census - not at all. So when the racial tub-thumpers get up on their historical hight horse, they should at least give credit to the Northern States for that phrase being in the US Constitution...
dvwjr
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.