The quiet genius of the Constitution

Sep 19, 2024 by Casey Mattox

On September 17, 1787, the delegates of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the Constitution and submitted it to the states for ratification.

We don’t tend to celebrate Constitution Day with the same fanfare as Independence Day. But maybe we should.

While the Declaration of Independence established a new nation, the Constitution defined it. In just 4,400 words, it created an entirely new form of government that

Both empowered democratic majorities and prevented them from violating the rights of minorities—including minorities of one, like you and me;
Recognized sovereignty in the people themselves;
Used the ambition of men to check one another’s abuse of government power; and
Was unlike anything before in human history.

But 237 years into this experiment in American constitutionalism, some Americans see the deep divisions in our society – especially in our political life – and wonder if the Constitution has failed us.

For example, the Dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law argues in his new book that the Constitution has put the country “in grave danger” and is a threat to our politics because it hampers majoritarian will and prevents majorities from getting things done.

In this way of thinking, government is the way we act together. And the checks and balances and individual liberties that it protects are not a feature because they stand in the way of a majority’s will.

But is that the point of our Constitution?

Yuval Levin, the Director of Social, Cultural and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has also published a new book – and a much more hopeful one – arguing that the Constitution can unify the country not by giving us a roadmap to get things done, but by helping us channel our disagreements better.

In his new book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again, Levin contends:

The breakdown of political culture in our day is not a function of our having forgotten how to agree with one another but of our having forgotten how to disagree constructively. And this is what our Constitution can better enable us to do. As a framework for unity, the Constitution functions as a means of rendering disagreement more constructive.

Levin channels the founders’ understanding that the combination of human liberty and frailty means that complete unity is neither possible nor desirable.

Instead, the Constitution takes human beings as they are and creates a way for us to channel our disagreements, accommodate one another, and ultimately live together as diverse and free people who aren’t going to see eye to eye.

Much of Levin’s book discusses how the Constitution’s ways of promoting productive disagreement have broken down:

Congress, for example, is supposed to be the representative body through which we channel our national disagreements.
But in practice, the executive branch – not equipped for this role – is now where much of our law is made. Instead of debate and compromise, we get rule by executive fiat.
The courts are then asked to step in to protect individual rights and rein in bureaucrats far more often than they should have to.

The result is that our elections and politics overall are increasingly divisive – but it’s not because of the Constitution. It’s because the Constitution isn’t being followed.

One of the biggest problems for Constitutional government is that people judge the Constitution based on the way our government currently operates, when the reality is that current practice is pretty far from what the Constitution prescribes.

— Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattox_) September 9, 2024

Levin starts his book by saying:

This is a book about America, and therefore, it is a hopeful book… It aims to help you see why America should make you hopeful, why it deserves your hope, and how that hope might be vindicated.

It is exactly that. It’s a hopeful book.

Restoring our Constitution and the system of government it designed will be no easy task. But Levin points the way to a future where every American has a seat at the table in their own governance and their civil liberties are secure. That’s worth fighting for.

This is just a small taste of his excellent book. But the great news is that you can extend your Constitution Day celebration by listening to the AFP American Potential podcast episode featuring the man himself as a guest!

So grab a copy of the book, download the podcast episode, and even make yourself your own Constitutional cocktail.

The Constitution is a product of the compromises of flawed men trying to build a nation that could endure despite being governed by flawed people.

At the closing of the Constitutional Convention, Dr. Benjamin Franklin was clear-eyed with his fellow delegates: “I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults… because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.”

Our Constitution is not perfect, but then neither are we.

In Federalist 51, James Madison wrote:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The Constitution is the best guide that the Founding Fathers could have left us.