One of the very great blessings we enjoy as Americans is the written Constitution we have inherited, and are called on to perpetuate and strengthen. It is, as Abraham Lincoln memorably put it (echoing Proverbs 25:11), the picture of silver that houses our apple of gold the institutional architecture that helps us put into effect the self-evident truths at the core of our founding.
On this date 232 years ago September 17, 1787 the Constitution was signed by its authors, and began its challenging journey toward ratification. It seems only fitting to spend Constitution Day reading the document and reading about its meaning and sources, its framers hopes and intentions, its history, and its (far from ideal, alas) current condition.
Such reading and rereading never stops being rewarding, because each year it meets you where you are and so offers something new and timely. This year, it seems to me that reading in and about the Constitution might result in particular in some striking insights about populism and elitism foibles of our time that were far from unfamiliar to the framers.
Populism and elitism are each in its way a kind of politics of hubris. Each is rooted in a plainly unreasonable view about the capacity of human beings be it a select class or the people as a whole to make just the right governing decisions. The Constitution is plainly dubious about both sets of claims to superior judgment. It is built upon a profound skepticism about the ability of any person and any group or political arrangement to overcome the limitations of human reason and human nature, and so establishes a system of checks to prevent sudden large mistakes while enabling gradual changes supported by a broad and longstanding consensus. Experts and aristocrats should not govern, nor should the people do so directly, but rather the peoples representatives should govern in a system filled with mediating institutions and opposing interests a system designed to force us to see problems and proposed solutions from a variety of angles simultaneously and, as Alexander Hamilton puts it in Federalist 73, to increase the chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws through haste, inadvertence, or design.
That such a system is far from populist should be obvious. In Federalist 63, James Madison says that the constitutional architecture involves the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity from directly governing. The more democratic elements of the Constitution are intended to be checks on the power of government, not expressions of trust in the wisdom of the public as a whole. And the more aristocratic elements are checks as well on the tendency of representative institutions to shamelessly curry favor with the electorate at the expense of responsible government.
That doesnt mean the Constitution assumes that our government will govern a nation of scoundrels and fools. As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, Madison writes in Federalist 55, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.
This is clearly true of our government. But our Constitution does more than presuppose these virtues. It encourages and reinforces them by offering us ways of avoiding the pitfalls of both elitism and populism both of which tend to undermine these virtues. We arent doing a great job of avoiding those pitfalls now, because we arent doing a great job of supporting our Constitution and governing ourselves by its light.
Reading the document and learning from its framers could help. And its never too late to start.
Happy Constitution Day.
