A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT
While today we marvel at the extraordinary accomplishment of our Founding Fathers, their own reaction to the US Constitution when it was presented to them for their signatures was considerably less enthusiastic. Benjamin Franklin, ever the optimist even at the age of 81, gave what was for him a remarkably restrained assessment in his final speech before the Constitutional Convention: "…when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." He thought it impossible to expect a "perfect production" from such a gathering, but he believed that the Constitution they had just drafted, "with all its faults," was better than any alternative that was likely to emerge.
Nearly all of the delegates harbored objections, but persuaded by Franklin's logic, they put aside their misgivings and affixed their signatures to it. Their over-riding concern was the tendency in nearly all parts of the young country toward disorder and disintegration. Americans had used the doctrine of popular sovereignty--"democracy"--as the rationale for their successful rebellion against English authority in 1776. But they had not yet worked out fully the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.
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Ben Franklin's Thoughts About the Constitution on the Day It Was Signed
"I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
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"I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best."
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"On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility -- and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument."
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Our Constitution are just words on parchment.........it derives all of it's power from the people who it protects actually standing up and protecting it.
Sadly, we have few willing to do exactly that, even fewer who truly understand it as it was INTENDED originally.
This document was not intended to guarantee the America citizens one single liberty.....it was to guarantee that the newly formed national government could never infringe upon any already enjoyed liberty........if the people wanted to restrict any liberty, they were left free to do so, just as they were prior to ratification of this document, by amending their STATE constitution...........but, this entire paradigm is lost today and we are just drifting unmoored in a sea of self serving elites who easily manipulate the ignorant masses.
Go Trump? Go Hillary? If that doesn't prove my point of our ignorance, I can't help you.
The Importance of a Moral Society
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
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