"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them to be like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment....Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their ancestors...Each generation is as independent as the ones preceding, as that was of all which had gone before."Jefferson went on to say that "the Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead." This, on one hand, is a boorish truism, but on the other hand it sheds some much needed light on our tendency to bow to a parchment idol, even after the world in which the parchment was written has long since slipped into the abyss of history.
This is not to say that all attachment to tradition is foolhardy; in fact, it is perhaps the most indispensable ingredient of humanity. Memory and tradition is what makes us super-organic, and ensures that we can spend our lives progressing, rather than learning anew each generation how to dig wells and bind books.
We must take care, however, to incorporate past knowledge and paradigms without enslaving ourselves to them. It is, I believe, impossible to argue that our Constitution today is not an iron cage, chaining us to concessions made to slave holders.
If George Washington were reincarnated today, would we put him in command of American troops in Iraq? Probably not. Not because he was not an accomplished general, but because mounted cavalry are quite vulnerable to IEDs. As the father of our country, who must be understood as one of the greatest men to ever live due to how much power he attained and then divested, said, "I do not think we are more inspired, have more wisdom, or possess more virtue, than those who will come after us."
One may argue that George 1 was wrong, given the relative intellect of George 43, but despite some well-documented exceptions, he was of course correct. After all, George 43 may be deficient in wisdom, but at least he doesn't own any slaves.
The concessions made to the southern states are now writ large across the nation, with two ultimate manifestations of the tyranny of the minority: the United States Senate and the Electoral College. For Wyoming to have the same power as California in the Senate, despite California's 70:1 population advantage, is as clear a crystallization of tyranny of the minority as one could fathom.
We cannot accept the small states to voluntarily renounce their wildly disproportionate power in the Senate or the election of Presidents. It is often said that power corrupts, but what actually corrupts much more predictably is the prospect of losing power. This is why the Electoral College stands, even after the coup d'etat of 2000, and this is why it will remain until and after a presidential election is inevitably thrown into the House of Representatives, in which each state gets one vote. Such an un-democratic nightmare is only a matter of time.
Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that, within individual states, legislatures modeled on the United States Senate were unconstitutional. It was unconstitutional, for example, for every county to have one seat, because since the counties varied wildly in population, this would violate the principle of one man, one vote.
This is an intriguing ruling for many reasons. First of all, one wonders how the Supreme Court could argue that the federal government is allowed to conduct itself in a manner that is deemed unconstitutional if pursued by an individual state. How could the Supreme Court not go to the logical conclusion and declare the United States Senate unconstitutional? Don't hold your breath.
Another flaw with our constitution is the presidential veto. This essentially endows a single man with the sway of a third house of Congress. A single man can disregard the will of representatives of two-thirds of the people. Does that seem democratic? American presidents have vetoed 2,500 bills. Congress has overridden 100 of them. Vetoes are final, and they are tyrannical.
The Supreme Court has declared 160 laws to be unconstitutional in the history of our republic. The president, noted above, has in effect done the same for 2,500 would-be laws. And these are "co-equal branches"? A tyrannical executive, a timid court, and a Senate in which 25% of the senators represent 5% of the population is many things, but democratic is surely not one of them. For the first three-quarters of the Bush 43 presidency, the Republican majority in the Senate, 51% of senators, represented 20% of the American population. Fantastic.
There is an easy way to fix this, to ensure that the federal government does not carry out actions that are objectively opposed by the majority of citizens for whom these actions are nominally executed. Here's what it would take:
"There shall be one house of Congress, a House of Representatives, with each representative representing that same number of citizens. The president shall be elected by a universal ballot in which each vote carries identical weight, regardless of where the vote is cast. The president shall have no power to veto the will of the people as expressed by the Congress."
We know this won't happen, because the fear of losing power is the ultimate corrupter. For the good of our country, however, we need to recognize that these issues are far more important than whether Hillary cried or whether McCain is too creepy-looking to be president. Or maybe Jefferson and Washington gave us to much credit and we'd be better off sticking to what they came up with. It's up to us.
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