Constitution Day

September 17 is Constitution Day in the US, marking the signing of the US Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. That document has provided the structure—and source of arguments—for America ever since.

Fellow blogger Roger Green recently wrote a terrific blog post about the Constitution. Roger asked people what Article One of the US Constitution does. None of the people he asked knew the answer. I frankly wasn’t surprised: Few Americans know what’s in their Constitution—and it is their constitution, despite what the Bush-Cheney regime might claim.

There have been numerous social experiments in which Americans are asked to sign a petition with nothing but the Bill of Rights in it. Most people refuse. There have been other experiments using the Declaration of Independence, and Americans similarly refused to endorse it.

Americans’ ignorance of their foundation document isn’t necessarily unique: Many people in New Zealand have no idea what the Treaty of Waitangi says, for example, and I bet you’d find similar results in most countries. But having citizens not knowing their country’s foundation document is downright dangerous. How can a person be an informed citizen if they don’t even know what the whole nation is built on?

Roger provided some evidence for this, I think, when he pointed out that the fact that Article One establishes the US Congress means that the “Founding Fathers” clearly intended for the primacy of Congress in the US system. That system was undermined by the Imperial Presidency, which really started growing rapidly, as Roger notes, under Truman before being temporarily reigned-in after the crimes of Watergate. Every president since then has tried to claim back some power, with the greatest success to date coming under the Bush-Cheney regime: They’ve claimed that the presidency has dictatorial powers (using historically and legally absurd interpretations of the “unitary executive theory” and “inherent powers” doctrine).

How can anyone understand what Bush-Cheney and the Republicans have done to the Constitution if they don’t understand what it actually says? Despite what the Bush-Cheney regime implies, it’s not that hard: Read the Constitution and maybe the Federalist Papers, among other things.

To help with understanding, Roger offered to give away 100 copies of the Constitution with additional background. That’s a terrific idea. Maybe Americans should commemorate Constitution Day with a Random Act of Civic Kindness: Give a copy of the Constitution to a fellow citizen.

If more American citizens read and understood the US Constitution, there’s no way that Bush-Cheney would be in power now, and no way that McCain-Palin would be anything more than a huge irrelevant joke. But most Americans don’t know their own Constitution. So maybe you should take up Roger on his offer, or read it at any number of online sites, but read it in any case—while you still can.