Summary: September 17 was the 230th Anniversary of the Constitution’s signing. By now many Americans realize that it no longer works well. Here are some of the reasons why it broke, and paths — fake and real — to fix it.
“Every country has the government it deserves”
— Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre. From Lettres et Opuscules (1811).
Democracy is a process of progress.
The first American regime was born with ratification of the Articles of Confederation on 1 March 1781. It failed catastrophically. The second American regime was born with ratification of the Constitution on 21 June 1788 and reached mature form in 1803 with the Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison.
We have constantly tweaked it to suit our changing needs and circumstances. There have been 27 formal amendments. The first major informal change occurred during the Civil War, fundamentally altering the relationship of the States to the newly empowered Federal government. The fires of the Great Depression and WWII drastically altered the form and operation of the government. Other major changes were the National Security Act of 1947, the great civil rights bills of 1964-1968, and the formal and informal expansion of the government’s power (and erosion of our rights) after 9/11.
Unfortunately all these changes have not sufficed to keep the Constitution functioning because our circumstances have changed faster. The system has ossified and mutated in scores of ways. Perhaps the most important is that America’s population has grown.
Population growth wrecked the Constitution.
Demographic change has undermined the Constitution order in two ways. First, there are so many more of us. In 1789 the United States had roughly 5 million people and 120 representatives in the House: approx 41 thousand people (only a fraction of them could vote) per official. The population was 92 million in 1911 when the House grew to its current number of 435 members; each represented 211 thousand people (only a fraction of them could vote). We still have 435 in the House, but now representing 300 million people, 690 thousand people per member.
As the number of people represented by each official increases, they grow more remote from us. They grow in status and power — and hence inevitably in wealth (legally or otherwise). The other side of the equation: our votes lose strength. The individual’s ability to affect the machinery diminishes. Disinterest in the system, even alienation, follows and erodes the regime’s legitimacy.
Second and equally damaging is the Senate’s design. The Great Compromise of the Constitutional Convention, gave every State two votes. Two votes for Wyoming’s 586 thousand people and two for California’s 40 million. The ten largest States have more people than the remaining 40. The fifth largest, Illinois, has more people than the 11 smallest States. (See Wikipedia for US population by State)
Worse, this disparity is growing as population slides from the rural center to the coasts. These States with few voters — they were called rotten boroughs 19th century Britain — increasingly shape US legislative action. Under Article V of the Constitution this game cannot be changed without the consent of each state losing its “equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
These are quiet but potentially terminal flaws. Remember, the American Revolution was about unequal representation — not unequal taxation (the 13 Colonies were taxed far more lightly than was Britain). For a good summary see “Damnable Deficient” by Colin Kidd at the London Review of Books.
“For all its sentimental and antiquarian dimensions, the cult of the founders has damaging political consequences. In particular, abject deference to the constitutional machinery devised in 1787, whose murky compromises are underacknowledged, tends to thwart the popular will and to stymie reformist impulses. Democrats proper, who have woken up in recent years to the dangers inherent in the electoral college, the equal representation of states – whether populous or empty – in the Senate and the judicial review of federal and state legislation, see little possibility of amending a venerated constitution. However, a few bold voices have questioned the infantile subservience of 21st-century citizens to 18th-century political solutions, foremost among them Robert Dahl in his devastating audit of the American political system, How Democratic is the American Constitution?
Before we try to fix the Constitution…
Chet Richards gives us an important warning in his magnum opus If We Can Keep It
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Everything needs updating, eventually.
Fixing the Constitution.
The 1% have gained economic and political power from our apathy and passivity. They own both major political parties. There are no substantial alternative mechanisms for political activity now that the unions have been largely neutered. In our plutocrat-run nation, any amendments to the Constitution will benefit the 1%. A Constitutional Convention would institutionalize plutocracy. See these for details about the many proposals.
- Can Constitutional amendments save the Republic?
- Is it time to take the drastic step of calling a Constitutional Convention?
- Warning: Was the 1787 Constitutional Convention a runaway, in effect a second revolution?
- Could a new Constitutional Convention help reform America? Is it worth the risk?
Dreaming about the wonderful changes we want is like singing “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?” Instead of dreams, let’s put our faith in work — because our problem is not too few goals, but too little discussion about actions. Plans are the connecting link between infotainment and great deeds. We need to have some.
How do we recruit, train, and motivate people to organize for political reform, and begin the long, difficult, and probably high-risk trek to a better America? The Reforming America: steps to new politics page lists over one hundred posts about steps people can take. They’re the least popular posts of the 4200 on the FM website. When we become more interested in acting than becoming “informed”, then change becomes possible.
Big dreams help after we build organizations to harness the energies of Americans committed to reform. After that, eventually, we will have the strength to challenge the 1% directly with Constitutional amendments, or even hold a Convention to radically reshape our political regime.
Until then we dream while we lose, getting weaker every day. Time is not our friend.
A last word
The Constitution has brought incredible freedom and prosperity to America, but neither its past nor our needs make it eternal. As Queen Gertrude says to Hamlet in Act I, scene 2
Thou know’st ’tis common;
all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
We are strong because of our ability to act together, to produce and follow leaders. We are strong due to our openness to other cultures and ability to assimilate their best aspects. We are strong due to our ability to adapt to new circumstances, to roll with defeat and carry on. We will be what we want to be. The coming years will reveal what that is.
This transition will be like a singularity in astrophysics, a point where the rules break down — beyond which we cannot see. Let’s work so that what comes next is better than what we have now.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the Constitution, about the New America, about Reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these…
- Important: the Constitution is dying.
- Lewis Lapham explains why America needs a Third Republic: the government runs the way it was designed to run by the Founders.
- Can we love the Constitution without knowing what it says?
- What comes after the Constitution? Can we see the outline of a “Mark 3” version of the United States?
A great book about the secret power source of the Constitution.
A Machine that Would Go of Itself:
The Constitution in American Culture
By Michael Kammen, professor of history at Cornell.
“The Constitution occupies an anomalous role in American cultural history. For almost two centuries it has been swathed in pride yet obscured by indifference: a fulsome rhetoric of reverence more than offset by the reality of ignorance.”
From the publisher…
“Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution’s place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution.
“How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since.
“He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states’ rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution.
“Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a ‘cult of the Constitution’ following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.”
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