Often, Americans speak of the US Constitution as if it is the fountain from which political truth originates. Even those who fight stridently for constitutional orthodoxy sometimes forget that the US Constitution and the rest of Americas founding documents were just as much a climax of political thought as they were a beginning.
Federalism is one of the few political mechanisms that benefit everyone.
By federalism, I mean the political construct we call the American Republic, a constitutional union of sovereign states under a limited national government whose power and authority are divided into separate and co-equal branches. This complicated and unique form of government was not drawn up at a whim.
The Federalist Papers, essays that argued for the adoption of the US Constitution after the Revolutionary War,said it this way: Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. In plainer terms, we canquote Jonah Goldberg, The founders put on paper what history had ratified by experience.
It is easy to be naturally conservative of the founding vision, accept it under its own terms, recognize that it has worked, and desire to maintain its efficacy. It is more complicated and requires deeper learning and understanding to be consciously conservative of the founding vision and to comprehend the origins of that vision. But in this more difficult path lies a more effective way to maintain that founding vision.
First and foremost, we must recognize the founders crafted a government for humans as they are and not for humans as they wished them to be. Asanother quote from the Federalist Papersposits, 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.
The founders recognized, most decidedly, that humanity was not composed of angels. They had learned through a study of history and through personal experience that if a system of government allows for abuse, the abuse will inevitably occur. From Caesar and the Roman Senate to King John and the Magna Carta, on to their own contemporary experience with the tyrannical abuses of King George, they knew and understood the corrupting rot of unrestrained power.
Secondly, it should be understood most of the founders were pious men, and even those who might escape this label were enlightened seekers of personal virtue. They believed virtue was the desired end of humanity, but they rejected the idea that virtue could be a construct.
They were inheritors of the spirit of theenlightenmentandrenaissanceeras, a spring of intellectual and rational thought that had only just escaped the darkened winter of feudal, papal dictatorial control that had strangled the progress of Western Civilization. Their experience and learning had prevailed upon them the belief that the individual, unfettered of corruptible autocratic rule, was the greatest wellspring of human progress.
Thirdly, we must take into consideration the failure that was the Articles of Confederation. Their distrust of national government being too strong, the founders first attempt at a free society lacked the invested authority and powers given to the national government to maintain the order necessary for the maintenance of individual liberty. The US Constitution was a document designed to protect freedom and liberty. But it was a tempered vision forged in the mistakes of an attempt at monarchist utopia.
With these three understandings before us, that power corrupts, that the individual is sacred, and that order is necessary for maintaining freedom, we have the fundamental blueprint from which the founders crafted the American Republic.
The US Constitution empowered the national government considerably beyond the impotence of the Articles of Confederation and yet checked that power by limiting its scope and authority, divided it into three branches at tension with one another, and further ensured a limiting factor of tension by securing the sovereignty of the states. To ensure the point was not missed, the first action of the new federal Congress was to ratify a bill enumerating the rights of the individual under the new framework of the federalist government.
Here is where we should recognize the common philosophical and political heritage of all Americans. Here is where we can see what is conclusive and sacred about the Constitution, federalism, and the miracle of the American Republic.
We disagree on much. We contest with each other on matters of ideological approach. We have fought hard and will continue to fight vehemently in factional contests for control of the wheels of government. But we must honor and treat sacred the understandings of human nature the founders built the government upon because those understandings have allowed the contests, the fights, and the great debates of our history to take place largely without the contest of arms and without the dissolution of the republic.
We should let states maintain their sovereignty, let the branches of federal government maintain their balance and counterpoise, let the difficult decisions be hashed out in Congress by the peoples representatives, and let the free market of ideas function fully and properly.
We should not turn our backs on the oracle of truth that those who came before so wisely supplicated for an understanding of how to proceed in their time. We must decide how best to proceed in our own time. We are faced with many complex issues whose answers do not necessarily lie plainly in an old book or document for us to happen upon. But as we proceed, let us not forget that we walk upon a foundation forged by lives, fortunes, and honor sanctified and sacrificed in the crucible of liberation.
What we decide to build today, we construct upon cornerstones wisely laid by those who perused the truths of human reality and considered a new and radical way to safeguard the sanctity of the individual against the constantly encroaching influence of power and greed. As we proceed with forging new ideas and unique solutions for our own time, let us similarly seek out the oracle of truth that is human experience. Let us always recognize the conclusive and sacred nature of what was wrought before our time when that oracle was appealed to in good faith.
Justin Stapley is a student at Utah Valley University studying political theory and constitutionalism. He works part time as a research assistant at UVUs Center for Constitutional Studies.
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