Mark Trahant: US Constitution a product of luck and compromise

Monday, July 29, 2013  

No regular blog posts until after Labor Day. I am working on other projects, plus getting ready to journey to Alaska.

That said: A few thoughts from a Sunday morning.

It's hard to get through Sunday talk shows without some expert invoking the sacredness of the Constitution or the framers. The problem with that is it reflects a time that never was. The framers were as divided in their time as Democrats, Republicans & Tea Party is in ours. Jefferson's election in 1800 was a called a second revolution because his governing ideas were so contrary to those of Adams. Even before 1800, the rancor between Federalists and Anti-federalists in constitutional debates would ring familiar today.

The constitution is not a magic document. It's a product of luck, of compromise, and of politics.

But what matters in any governing document is the process that allows a resolution of differences, even stark ones. An Anti-federalist, Centinel, made this case in 1787, when he warned about a political culture in which innovation portended more danger than promised reform.

I have been thinking about this original debate while reading the OECD's latest data on global health care spending. The Affordable Care Act is imperfect. But instead of a debate where both sides try to shape it into something better, as was the case with those bitter foes in 1788 and 1789, the opposition is instead working hard to make sure the law fails, even at the point of holding the rest of the government (and its funding) hostage.

Then, perhaps, the best part of the sacred constitution narrative is that the very people who are most likely to say that ... are closer in kind to the Anti-federalists. That was the small government, anti-tax crowd of the day. Anti-federalists opposed the constitution.

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He lives in Fort Hall, Idaho, and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Join the discussion about austerity. A new Facebook page has been set up at: www.facebook.com/IndianCountryAusterity.