Read the Constitution

On September 17, 1787, 39 men gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to sign the Constitution. With their signatures they instituted a form of government that would last over two centuries—a rare accomplishment by itself. More importantly, the Founders established that the legitimacy of the American government rested with the American people, and that its mandate was to protect their liberty.

Drawn up in secret, behind a phalanx of guards, the American Constitution is the oldest and the briefest of all written constitutions. The fact that the Constitution is a written document is one of its greatest virtues: It is not, as some might claim, an “organic” parchment, changing according to the whims of the day. Instead, it should only be altered through the slow, nationwide process of amendment. For these reasons, and for the freedoms it secures, it is also the most studied, imitated, and beloved constitution in the world.

Every great American political movement from abolitionism to civil rights finds its inspiration in the Founders, and its culmination in a change to the Constitution. Even today groups as diverse as the N.R.A., the A.C.L.U., the Tea Partiers, and the Ron Paul revolutionaries draw their inspiration from the Constitution.

The passion for the nation’s founding and for its Constitution puts biographies of the Founders on the best-seller lists regularly, and keeps the History Channel flickering unceasingly. In every generation there has been an attempt to create a national Constitution Day. Celebrations grew in the Midwest during the middle part of the century, then faded out. But Constitution Day was finally formalized in just 2004 when West Virginia’s veteran Senator Robert Byrd passed an amendment subsuming the long-forgotten “Citizenship Day” into Constitution Day.

The association between citizenship and the Constitution is a strong one. A piece of paper, by itself, would guarantee no liberties at all. It is “we the people” who must hold government and its ministers to the Constitution. It is jurists who must guard that document with a tradition of faithful adherence to its words. It is the political activists and historians who must excite in us a devotion to its principles. The Constitution without the American citizenry would be a mere artifact. The American citizenry without the Constitution would be a disconnected mob, vulnerable to the whims of demagogues, and a danger to itself.

It seems obvious that all students should learn about the framing of the Constitution, the debates that accompanied its passage, the Federalist papers, and the dissent of the Anti-Federalists. Patriotic adults should keep a copy of the Constitution at home, many political organizations distribute them freely. The Constitution is this nation’s patrimony, and the guard of our freedom. It can’t hurt to read it.