Constitutional Rules

Constitutional Rules IS OUR CONSTITUTION A "LIVING" DOCUMENT? Americans are hugely proud of and greatly revere their Constitution, and so does the rest of the world stand in awe at the economic and political might of the United States in adherence to its Constitution. Founding Fathers poured out their highest and best during the Constitutional Convention held in 1787 in fashioning a most precious document (Patton 2000) that would define and establish the role of government. The standards set were high.

George Washington said "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the Hand of God (qtd in Patton p 1)." The Preamble ordained and established a government "to promote the general welfare" and "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. (Patton)" That liberty meant economic freedom or a free-market economy. This free-market economy would in turn be basically dependent on political and moral freedoms (Patton).

This means that American society is free only as long as the principles of constitutional government and the precepts of God are genuinely lived, i.e., in the mind and in the heart and seen in action. There is economic freedom only if the government does not become tyrannical and solid values are authentically observed. And there is political freedom when the powers of government are strictly limited and specified (Patton) in order to avoid or prevent dictatorship.

In Article I, Section 8, Founding Fathers clearly enumerated the functions of the Federal government: 1) lay and collect taxes for the payment of debts and for common defense and the general welfare of the nation; 2) borrow money on the credit of the United States; 3) regulate commerce; 4) establish rules for citizenship; 5) establish bankruptcy laws; 6) coin and regulate the value of money; 7) standardize weights and measures; 8) punish counterfeiting of U.S.

securities and coins; 9) establish post offices and post roads; 10) pass copyright and patent laws; 11) establish federal courts; 12) punish crimes on the high seas; 13) declare war; 14) raise and finance the armed forces; 15) establish rules for organizing, arming and disciplining the armed forces; 16) call up state militias to execute the laws of the nation, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; 17) administer the seat of government; 18) administer federal lands, and 19) make all laws that shall be necessary and proper for execution f the foregoing powers.

Yet many acts of today's government can be considered unconstitutional (Patton). Congress does not possess the constitutionally derived power to provide funding to education, set up retirement programs, national health care, or redistribute income among citizens through welfare, food stamps or farm subsidies. Proposals for such programs, especially a national health care system program, are turned down because there are no Constitutional grounds for their legislation.

There is a general welfare clause in the Preamble, which can involved to permit Congress to pass legislations for health care, student loans, child care, foreign aid, farm handouts and the like. During the time of the late Chief Justice John Marshall in the early 1800s, it was among the enumerated powers.

But today, members of Congress (and ordinary citizens as well) can and do reinterpret or altogether ignore solidly conceived and framed out constitutional rules for the sake or in the pursuit of idealistic or pragmatic ends for the "general welfare" of the country. It is, then, far better and more honest t call for a new constitutional convention to amend Article 1 Section 8 than to trample upon and disregard the priceless efforts and geniuses of the original founders in debating over the powers of government.

It must be emphasized that the original objective of the Constitution was to limit the power and role of the government in order to facilitate prosperity (Patton), which is the same thing as "general welfare." Liberty, in turn, is the true source of general welfare. No matter how those in power claim to possess good intentions in performing certain acts, those good intentions can lead to oppressive or even dictatorial control without solid and express Constitutional constraints that instead bind the people, rather than the government.

The Constitution clearly defines and limits the powers and responsibilities of government and these are not subject to re-interpretation Article VI provides that Congress and the President are "bound by an Oath of Affirmation to support the Constitution" (qtd in Patton) as well as to preserve, protect and defend it. Any desired changes can be properly made only through the tedious Amendment process.

It is about time that the American people took serious stock of the price, value, vulnerability and sanctity of their liberty (Patton) by renewing the high standard or ideals set by President Washington and the other framers in no less than their level of diligence, wisdom and honesty. Only then can the Constitution be truly a living document. Another reality is that our Constitution provides for an ideal democracy or self-governance. Studies on self-governance have been undertaken to increase or update political, economic and organizational theories.

Elinor Ostrom (qtd in Lutge 2002) conducted tests on a number of cases of commons in which self-governance failed. One such group consisted of fishermen who were too heterogeneous ad rules on fishing lacked proper enforcement (Lutge). Another case was that of Southern California inhabitants who could not agree on a common distribution scheme for their groundwater basins Furthermore, the inhabitants had different viewpoints on the problem and many did not recognize the legitimacy of their diverging interests. These are very specific cases studied on the subject of self-governance.

But self-governance may fail for a number of reasons (Lutge). The population may be very large (and the American population is), rules may be inappropriately set, individual world-views or mental models may make profitable or meaningful cooperation difficult or improbable.