[Mb-civic] Our enduring Constitution - Margaret H. Marshall - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Our enduring Constitution

By Margaret H. Marshall  |  September 17, 2005

''UNPRECEDENTED." That is how James Madison described the government 
established by the US Constitution. ''We cannot find one express 
prototype in the experience of the world," he said. ''It stands by itself.

Nearly 230 years later, our federal Constitution remains apart: In the 
words of historian Joseph Ellis, ours is ''the longest-lived republic in 
world history." And certainly the most influential. From the United 
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the constitutions of 
emerging democracies on every continent, the US Constitution has served 
as model and inspiration.

Ellis also says, ''All alternative forms of political organization 
appear to be fighting a futile rearguard action against the liberal 
institutions and ideas first established in the United States in the 
18th century."

 From radical experiment to global gold standard: What accounts for the 
continued vitality of the federal Constitution?

The answer lies in our founders' unwavering commitment to individual and 
property rights, and in the brilliant system of government they devised 
to protect those rights from government oppression.

Recall that the drafters of our Constitution had lived as a colonized 
people. They had experienced firsthand the work of tyranny. Religious 
persecution. Press censorship, arbitrary seizures of property, summary 
trials and executions, oppressive taxes -- the sting of harsh, 
discriminatory laws and unequal treatment, of government run amok, had 
marred every facet of their lives.

They hoped the odd new government established in the federal 
Constitution would hold government in check, allowing human liberty to 
flourish in an ordered society. Power would be diffused throughout the 
federal government and shared with the states. An independent judiciary 
would be authorized to administer laws impartially, and to protect the 
basic rights of individuals when popular sentiment or government action 
threatened those rights.

In short, the founders strove to create a ''government of laws and not 
of men." Those are the words of John Adams, enshrined in the 
Massachusetts Constitution, the structural model of our national charter.

The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia was radical and brilliant, but 
it was not perfect. It compromised shamefully on the issue of slavery. 
It turned a blind eye to the rights of women.

Yet the US Constitution did what no other had ever done before it, and 
many have failed to do since. With the terrible exception of the Civil 
War, it has provided the framework for nonviolent political debate, even 
of an era's most divisive social and political issues. The Constitution 
rarely provides final ''answers" to the endlessly thorny issues 
presented by our changing society. But it allows resolutions to emerge 
from civil dialogue, not blood in the streets.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/17/our_enduring_constitution/
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