[r9etb]

. Thus, our task, if it is possible, is to educate those not accustomed to following its structure and respecting its value, as perhaps the greatest political instrument of history.

But that's precisely the point, and precisely where Sobran misses the boat. If the people aren't accustomed, how are you going to make them accustomed? The answer is, you can't. They have to get there on their own.

There's a story about how, during the Viet Nam war, we sent a group of earnest young folks over to Saigon to help them craft a nice, new constitution. They argued, negotiated, and sweated amongst themselves, and it was by all accounts a thing of beauty.

Only problem was, it had absolutely no impact -- the moral values of Vietnamese people were different from those enshrined by the earnest Ivy-leaguers.

As for the Constitution being a great political instrument: it is. But only because it expresses the far greater moral fibre of the people who created it. The strength of the United States came not from the scrap of paper, but from the people who wrote it.

[TEXICAN II]

Inded Sir, you are surely correct-we both chase the same result. Alexis de Tocqueville actually ran the quarry to ground-he said something on the order of, "America will cease to be good when its people do", or words to that effect. The problem is with today's citizen, not with the document.