(Sept. 17) Today, Sept. 17, no less than on the Fourth of July, the public should be celebrating what founder James Madison described to his friend Thomas Jefferson as nothing “less than a miracle.” Teachers nationwide should highlight its lessons.
Today is Constitution Day, the 237th anniversary of the day 39 delegates to the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the document they created for the people’s debate and consent. Madison, often called the “Father of the Constitution” for his signal role in driving its drafting and ratification, and Jefferson, primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence we celebrate each July 4, together represent the practical application (Madison) of the highest republican ideals (Jefferson’s draft) that mankind has ever used for human governance.
Alas, far too few people appreciate, much less understand in any workable detail, the astonishing ingenuity and admirability of the Constitution that Madison and his compatriots crafted. Worse, too many young people don’t just misunderstand our founding, but they also think this nation and its founding were inherently benighted. Beginning in grade school sometimes, and overwhelmingly so by the time young Americans reach college, our youngsters are taught malicious falsehoods about the American system and history — if, that is, they are taught about it at all.
Too few people comprehend how astonishing it was for our founders to combine two profoundly moral and then-unusual insights to the task of governance. The idea that government exists not to limit freedom but to protect it and the idea that government’s very legitimacy rests on the consent of the governed ran counter to the practices of most of human history. Both, though, are rooted in principles that are wise and humane. To put them into practice together, especially in a situation in which already-sovereign states wanted the advantages of union without forfeiting their own internal authority and prerogatives, required a work of collective genius from the assembled convention delegates…. (For the rest of this column, follow this link.)
