Celebration America Blog

On September 17th, 1787, forty American men convened to sign a treasonous document. Among these traitors were George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. They signed what is now the United States Constitution.

Hard as it may be to believe, our constitution was once a betrayal of America herself. They were committing an act of treason against the Articles of Confederation, America’s first attempt at a united government.

The Articles of Confederation was a logical result of the Revolutionary War, for the leaders of the fledgling nation feared that a strong central government might lead to another tyrannical regime like that which they fought against in the rebellion. A loose confederacy, they determined, was the right way to go. Yet in their aspirations for a weak central government and strong state governments came a document that was both ineffective and doomed to failure.

The document was plagued with problems, and so the Philadelphia Convention was convened on May 25^th, 1787 to revise the Articles. The delegates to this convention did not, however, revise the Articles. Instead they met in secret, making every effort to maintain that secrecy, and rewrote a brand new system of government, excluding all outside influence. Furthermore, the Constitution specified that only 9 out of the 13 original states needed to ratify the Constitution for it to go into effect, which was a remarkable difference from the required unanimous consent to amend the Articles. In truth, those states which first ratified the Constitution seceded from the Articles.

In retrospect, though we do not tend to see this as an act of treason, we view the Philadelphia Convention as inherently good, just as we view the Declaration of Independence, and rightfully so. The Articles of Confederation was a system of government under which the national government was too weak to function in any serious capacity. Under the Articles the government could not levy taxes and therefore raise revenues unless the states, adverse to national taxation, were willing to provide such funds, which they typically were not. Congress could raise an army and a navy, but only with the support of the states; it was in essence only able to call upon the states to send their militias. The states were not required to comply with Congress’s requests for military forces and revenue, and they were reluctant to do so much at all, causing Congress to seek other routes, such as the Northwest Ordinance, to raise funds.

These flaws within the Articles of Confederation led directly to a number of incidents in which the national government was impotent. Perhaps the most spectacular event showcasing the failures of the Articles was Shays’ Rebellion. In the year 1786, Massachusetts farmers rebelled against land foreclosures carried out by the courts on behalf of creditors. Daniel Shays, a Yankee captain of the Revolutionary War, led the uprising, staging a number of armed attacks on courthouses to prevent the foreclosures from continuing. The Massachusetts governor called upon Congress to send military aid to the state, but they were unsuccessful in their attempts to raise a militia that could halt the advance of Shays and his followers. The lack of national aid in this crisis increased the dissatisfaction with the Articles, for it had become apparent that Congress was powerless when it came to lending a much-needed helping hand.

Congress’s inability to regulate commerce created a number of problems regarding the ability to form a coherent national economy and produce foreign trade agreements at a national level, and the fact that it couldn’t raise revenue from the states caused it to revert to disbanding the army and printing worthless money, among other risky measures to fund even its most basic functions. Furthermore, the Articles could only be amended given unanimous consent of all 13 states, which was virtually impossible. The Annapolis Convention was held in September 1786 to revise the Articles, yet only twelve delegates from five states attended, preventing any changes from taking place.

That is, until the Philadelphia Convention, the meeting suggested by the Annapolis delegates to modify the Articles. Yet it was impossible to repair, so it had to be scrapped entirely and replaced with a new, fresh document.

Thus, in the failure of the Articles of Confederation came perhaps the most important document in American history: the Constitution. This charter, while keeping the revolutionary principles of smaller national government alive, increased federal power in a way that would greatly improve upon the failings of the Articles and lay the foundation for the best system of government in existence.

“Give me liberty or give me death!” proclaimed Patrick Henry prior to the Revolutionary War, and his declaration seems to be ringing around the globe today.

As many as 6 million Mexicans take the risky trek through the heat of the desert to enter this country illegally each year.

Nearly 98 thousand Cuban refugees risk their lives annually to flee the tyranny of Fidel Castro’s regime and come to the US.

Tens of thousands of Americans have put their lives on the line and died in battle for their country.

Why is that?

There is only one answer as to why these people would risk their lives in one form or another for America: She is the premier land of freedom and opportunity. There is no other like her. Since the Constitution first went into effect in 1789, the United States has had a reputation of being “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” and it is well-deserved.

Our Constitution grants us rights unseen in other countries, yet we don’t think about the benefits that this country has to offer, the rights that we have that are denied to Cubans in their country, to Iranians in theirs, and to the news network that was shut down in Venezuela for opposing dictator Hugo Chavez.

While our government is criticized by foreign nations as being “oppressive” in its “spying” and “censorship,” American citizens continue to enjoy more personal freedoms than the majority of other countries on the planet. We constantly see headlines in the newspaper about the government engaging in “illegal wiretapping” and “torturing” of accused terrorists, issues which are entirely debatable. And while headlines rage negatively about our civil rights, we don’t compare the right of Muslim schoolgirls to wear hijabs in the US to the prohibition of that, and other religious garb, in France, coincidentally our biggest Western critic. We in the US have the right to freely exercise our religious faith, or lack thereof, as granted to us by the Constitution.

We can also look at the US in comparison to the UK. We are blessed to have a Constitution which, at least in the amendments, spells out our rights as citizens - rights which the courts, overall, do a decent job protecting, even if the judgments are sometimes disputed. Those disputes aside, we have certain rights that cannot be abridged. The British have rights, but they’re not spelled out on paper. They’re subject to change without a Constitution guaranteeing those rights to their citizens.

The United States is by far the most privileged nation on Earth. We do not experience poverty like those of other nations. Our poor (consisting of only 12% of the population) often own a home, have a car, and posses a computer with internet access. That is poverty in this country, and we are lucky not to know what poverty is in other countries. For example, 480 million people live on less than two dollars a day in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, yet the number of people in such conditions in the US is so infinitesimal that they’re not even included in reports.

Our GDP per capita is around $44,000, and our GDP PPP is around $13.13 trillion. Our unemployment rate is at a mere 4.4%, lower than the average of the previous four decades. This economic prosperity was made possible by, yes, American hard work and ingenuity, but also by a government system and citizen-granted rights which enable for a thriving economy to occur.

It’s hard to imagine a United States of America without the Constitution. We could potentially see Muslims denied the right to practice their faith because of a small band of radical jihadists bent on destroying America. We could see a 15-year-old accused of murdering a neighbor locked in jail for life without trial, liberal Democrats locked away for opposing Bush administration policies, and the New York Times shut down because the government opposes it. Heck, I could be denied the right to publish this column because I’m “too young.” The list goes on and on for what reality in this country would be without the Constitution.

Our rights are also protected in the very nature of our government structure. This document laid the groundwork for a phenomenal system of government which, despite its flaws, has worked extraordinarily well over the past two hundred years. In three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), in addition to the people, we have checks and balances as well as separation of powers. In separate branches of government we find the powers of one branch checked by the others; in the people we find a stopgap against the tyranny of government; and in a republican government structure we find preventions against the tyranny of the majority.

We are blessed, as Americans, to have a constitution which so clearly establishes and protects our rights as citizens in as many ways as it does. The document enables us, the most privileged people on Earth, to have many personal freedoms and protections of those freedoms that we take for granted.

This – a deep recognition and sense of pride for this country, the ideals on which it is based, and the wonderful benefits given to us by the Constitution – is what drove me to organize the 2007 Colorado Constitution Day Celebration on Saturday, September 15^th, a celebration of this outstanding charter for teens aged 13-18. It is what motivates me to create such a celebration and to continue it with Celebration America, and I hope it motivates you all to do your own part to celebrate this nation and its founding document as well.