In my last post I examined how our founding fathers struggled with deciding the balance of power between the federal government and states’ rights. The compromise they reached in drafting our Constitution expressly leaves those authorities not granted to the federal government to the states, including education, and they surely expected state elected officials to do right by citizens in the matters with which they are entrusted.
I’ve been thinking more about the debates leading up to ratification of the Constitution that established our democracy, and the intense negotiations that were necessary to get people with very different views to agree on something so complex as creating a new nation.
The United States proclaimed independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, in the powerful but not legally-binding Declaration of Independence. The Continental Congress approved Articles of Confederation the following year to establish a central government. It required unanimous approval by all thirteen colonies….no easy feat…but I expect the fact that British troops had captured Philadelphia and were raiding communities along the eastern seaboard provided a strong incentive for colonies to coalesce around the Articles.
It was recognized that there were flaws in the Articles of Confederation which would need to be addressed in a permanent Constitution. For example, there was no executive branch to carry out laws passed by Congress. There was no judicial branch establishing a national court system to decide disputes of law. States had no power to tax or regulate trade, resulting in many conflicts among states. So, fifty-five men gathered in 1787 at a Constitutional Convention.
One of the great debates was over whether to include a specific list of personal liberties, that is, limitations on the government, in the Constitution. The Federalists believed it was not needed since the Constitution limited the authority of the government, not people. The Anti-Federalists believed it was necessary to preserve individual rights and prevent government from encroaching on those rights. Both sides had very strong views. For six weeks they listened, passionately debated, published papers for and against and, in the end, an agreement was reached under which ten amendments to the Constitution would be included as what we know as the Bill of Rights. There are many other provisions of the Constitution that evolved through extensive negotiations.
In his book Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, Dr. Richard Beeman details the struggles and compromises that made our Constitution a reality. Beeman says our Founding Fathers were humble men who were not convinced that they were absolutely right and their opponents were absolutely wrong. They were able to balance being responsive to the people while keeping in mind the greater good of the nation as a whole.
Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention at 81. His speech on the day of the final vote on the Constitution is legendary (although he wasn’t able to personally deliver it). In it he acknowledged that the Constitution wasn’t perfect but that it was better than anything else, and that a government is only as good as the people who administer it. He respected the rights of others to hold opinions that did not align with his own and he valued compromise. Walter Isaacson’s biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, states “compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.”
The character traits of humility and compromise evidenced by our Founding Fathers are rare in politics nowadays but so desperately needed. There once was a reverence for public offices and the institutions of government since they represent elements of our democracy. Historically leaders of opposing parties have respected each other’s positions and maintained personal friendships even while disagreeing vehemently on policies. President Ronald Reagan (Republican) and House Speaker “Tip” O’Neill (Democrat), John McCain (Republican) and Joe Biden (Democrat), Orrin Hatch (Republican) and Ted Kennedy (Democrat), President Bill Clinton (Democrat) and both President Bushes (Republicans) are examples of politicians with very different views who became good friends. They were able to put the country’s best interest ahead of ideological divides.
Newt Gingrich ushered in an era of hyper-partisanship in 1990 with a memo entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” that provided party members with words to use in describing opponents, including destructive, liberal, traitors, radical, and corrupt. He encouraged politicians not to socialize with members of other parties and unashamedly pronounced that winning is the only thing that matters—at any cost. And with that, civility and decorum have become unpopular and are seen as weaknesses rather than signs of integrity and self-control. When I worked in Washington I saw representatives and senators pass each other in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol and only speak to members of their own party. What a shame.
As a result of the “win at any cost” political climate, elected officials are now in perpetual campaign mode and passing meaningful legislation seems to be way down on the list of priorities. Commitment to public good as evidenced in the actions of our Founding Fathers is hard to find. Creating jobs that pay a living wage and allow citizens to escape poverty, improving educational opportunities and access to health care, promoting equity, repairing our infrastructure, protecting our natural resources, and ensuring that every child in this country gets a great start in life have taken a distant back seat to emotionally charged rhetoric that excites people but doesn’t amount to anything substantive.
The Founding Fathers were ordinary men who had personal flaws like all of us, but who also had an unselfish and extraordinary dedication to public service and to a new, representative form of government. They anticipated that corruption, greed, ignorance, and apathy could bring democracy to its knees and included provisions they thought would enable people of good will to protect the nation’s best interest. Franklin and his contemporaries were unsure of how long this experiment in democracy would last, and he said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
What exactly did he mean by that? The National Center for Constitutional Studies defines “virtuous” as “agreeing to forego some personal advantage for the betterment of one’s neighbor and society.” Benjamin Franklin knew that corrupt and selfish people could not handle self-governance. Democracy requires individuals to be able to resist the temptations of power and greed, to seek truth, and to put fellow citizens and the nation before themselves. Unfortunately, our children are not seeing many virtuous role models in elected positions these days.
We should be teaching children how our nation came into existence, what the people at that time feared and what they hoped to accomplish, and that public service is a noble endeavor requiring dedication to something greater than oneself. Schools must provide opportunities for students to understand the way government works and how to discern facts from opinion (“alternative facts”) at a time when the public is being desensitized to extreme positions which violate norms that have preserved our democracy for going on 250 years. To once again quote Thomas Jefferson, “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”
by Dr. Melody Musgrove