We are Finally Here!

For those who have been suffering through my articles for the past many days, you probably suspected early on what it was I was trying to do.  We started with the most basic philosophical question, who am I and why am I here, and have worked our way through some of the highlights of western thought.  This has been, at best, a very shallow overview, but I hope it has been a little interesting and perhaps, at times, mildly entertaining.  

But all that said, we are here!  At the same time that the enlightenment was occurring in Europe, there was this gang of tax evading, monarch doubting, freedom loving, miscreants, concentrated in several coastal cities along what we now refer to as the eastern seaboard of the United States.  They were learned men, as learned as men could be in those days.  That meant that much of the writings and thoughts that we have been exploring over these past several weeks were very familiar to them.  It is said that Abraham Lincoln had read every book in his library.  I do not doubt that to be true, and I am quite certain that Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison did the same.  What we have been exploring in these short essays are the thoughts that they encountered in those libraries.  We know for a fact that these thoughts were incorporated into our founding documents because, well, our founders tell us so.  As a reward for your putting up with the enlightenment we will now shift to one of the pinnacles of western thought as expressed in the political, the US Constitution.  

Elsewhere on this site, Mike Ford has asked for some thoughts on how to disrupt what we see going on in our educational system.  I will leave the “how-to” to those more familiar with navigating those systems.  That said, I would love to see this series of essays made into a presentation that could be given either at an assembly, or as a download for the home schooled.  Perhaps someone with that skillset could jump in here and help out.  But ladies and gentlemen, that is how we combat this degradation of our schools.  We fight misinformation with better information.  

Enough of that, onto the thoughts behind the greatest political document ever created.

A little background is in order here.  Shortly after the Boston Tea party, caused by the implementation of a tax which incidentally lowers the cost of tea by giving the British East India Company a monopoly for the colonial market, the British respond with a blockade of Boston Harbor.  The First Continental Congress is convened in 1774 in order to organize a response to King George III and organize an economic boycott.  Of course, the British wind up shooting on a bunch of protesters in Lexington and Concord, the “shot heard around the world”, and the struggle to create the greatest nation begins.  The Second Continental Congress is called in 1775 and drafts the Declaration of Independence which states the then radical concept that governments draw their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, an enlightenment concept which we covered several weeks ago, as well as that all men are “created equal” which was both a key Christian concept that was so revolutionary that even the Disciples had trouble comprehending it, and one that was supported by the enlightenment as well.  In addition to that radical document, the Articles of Confederation are also drawn up as a first attempt to create a loose organization of states.  Because the founders had a great distrust of centralized government, this first organizing document reserves almost all power to the states.  There is no power to tax, raise an army, or ensure that states cooperate in commerce between them.  That the individual states were able to win a war against the British under these rules is a testament to the brilliant leadership of George Washington and the tenacity of the colonists.  

Because the original Articles of Confederation required nine of thirteen states to agree to any new law, it made the creation of the most basic legislation impossible.  In 1787 the Constitutional Convention begins in Philadelphia with the purpose of amending the original Articles into something more workable.  Instead of amending the existing Articles, an entirely new constitution is drafted, a document then called the Philadelphia proposal or Philadelphia draft. The deliberations behind this radically new document are secret and it falls upon Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to defend their work.  A key stumbling block to ratification was the New York delegation who, except for Hamilton, walked out of the Constitutional deliberations.  

It is difficult to express just how radical this new document was.  The concepts of federalism, separation of powers, popular representation, and sovereignty of the people, were each individually unique.  Together they were nothing short of absolutely radical.  The trio of Hamilton, Madison and Jay drafted a series of papers to explain what they were thinking and why it was critical.  The purpose of these papers was to sell this new concept to the people and legislatures of the individual states.  We can know why our founders created the form of government that they did because they left a detailed series of articles that describe their thinking.  The Federalist Papers are critical for a number of reasons.  A fair number of us writing here have pledged allegiance to the Constitution.  These documents tell us precisely what that Constitution means.  For those who question the motives of our founding principles, we have them, in writing, if we bother to read them.  Our political leaders swear to uphold this document.  It would be good for them to understand that which they pledged to uphold.  

And so it begins.  In the first Federalist paper Hamilton states the reason for this series of articles.  He asks, “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force”.  This “more perfect union” question was precisely the one that Plato and Aristotle discussed in their works.  Given the immutable nature of mankind, and the history of government to that point, the question was not an easy one to answer, and it still is not.  

Over the next several days we will review these articles and the arguments for this new Constitution.

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