Harnessing the Properties of Light (Part Two)

(Editor's note:  This is the second and concluding segment in our two part series introducing readers to the US Constitution of 1789  To view the first segment, click here.)

With so much at stake in the present, can anyone well imagine a bloodless, under the radar revolution to table the US Constitution and replace it on the fly with another?  The truth is it's been done before ...

The dilemma of the founding fathers in 1787 was intriguing.  The stakes were no less than the continuation of the great American experiment in democracy, at grave risk as it attempted to leave the station.  The flashlight of the existing constitution from the nation's first 11 years was too weak, unable to illuminate the path forward --- the path to continued enlightenment.  Clearly, it had to be strengthened.  But there was equivalent danger at the other extreme --- should the flashlight be transformed into a destructive laser beam.

From this dilemma, a delicate yet efficient balancing act was necessary.  What was needed was something between two undesirable extremes.  The flashlight's batteries had to be replaced with new, more powerful ones --- strong enough to illuminate the path.  At the same time, the light still had to be kept weak enough, filtered to counter direct contact and avoid injury or plunder as with a laser beam.  Somehow, the strengthening of the flashlight had to match the gentle diffusing of the laser.  What was needed, perhaps, was “a government that was too weak to aid the wolves, and yet strong enough to protect the sheep.”

James Madison devised his great doctoral thesis from this vantage point.  Here, of course, we are speaking of his authorship of the US Constitution, America’s second and latest attempt at true democratic self rule: a solemn, permanent, social compact among the states to operate with individual sovereignty but within the framework of a collective federal system.  The creation of the US Constitution was molded, set forth and argued in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Madison’s review of all such prior human efforts at harnessing effective democratic rule, coupled with a series of compromises as a result of the founders’ debate, forged a system of checks and balances.  The result was creation of our present system of current government, with three equal branches, each independent of, yet answerable to, the others.  The legislative branch would make the laws, the executive branch would enforce them and the judicial branch would provide interpretation where necessary.  No one branch, nor the people themselves, would be able to grab all the light at any one time.  However, a sufficient concentration of light would still be permitted to protect the rule of law and permit progressive social change to occur.

In the legislative branch, a compromise denied the big states (House of Representatives) the ability to swallow up the small states (Senate).  That is, the legislature itself would be split into two distinct branches, creating what was referred to as a bicameral chamber.  The assent of both would be required to enact a new law.  Even the president, the one direct representative of all the citizens, would be elected not directly by a majority vote of the citizens but rather indirectly by what would become known as an electoral college.

Seeking to ensure that a lone rogue state or small minority of states could not stalemate the process, the founders also made a shrewd agreement for implementation of the new US Constitution.  When the affirmative vote of 9 of the original 13 states had been given, the new constitution would become the law of the land in all 13 states.  The necessary ratification figure was thus accomplished two years later in 1789, and in the end, all 13 states would vote unanimously to ratify the new constitution.  It was a bloodless revolution, or, as the French might say, a coup d’état.  Compared to the way things had been done previously, it could be said that the revolution to create a new US Constitution turned our old system of government on its head.

Fast forward almost 230 years to the present.  With so much at stake, can anyone well imagine a bloodless, under the radar revolution to table our constitution and replace it with another?  The feat would present an extraordinary testament to the people's yearning to be free.  It's been done before.

-Michael D'Angelo

Harnessing the Properties of Light (Part One)

(Editor’s note:  This is the first segment in a new two part series introducing readers to the US Constitution of 1789.)

How frequent is the observation made that the team which appears to have the superior talent does not win the contest? …

…  Primarily, the loser offers up the excuse that the players simply did not perform up to their capabilities --- as a team should.  Instead of a bus, it is said, they take 25 individual rides to the ballpark.  Typically, in baseball as in representative government, the outcome is fatal to success.

In a democracy which exceeds 300,000,000 people, the objective of keeping the citizens content in the pursuit of happiness requires considerably more expertise.  How does the American government keep the game and its players functioning so smoothly?  How is the officiating kept separate and unbiased in a low key, unassuming manner?  Wasn’t it always this way?

This question suggests the response.  In 1787 the founding fathers were faced with quite a predicament.  Flying under the radar would appear to have been rather impossible then, given the scope and magnitude of the crisis which was upon the young nation and their proposed remedial social science project.  Today, however, this seems lost on the ordinary citizen.  But it is worth remembering.

The young, fledgling democracy was in danger of failing, just 11 years into the experiment.  Under America’s then and first constitution, known as the Articles of Confederation, each state (there were 13 at the time) retained its own individual sovereignty and the corresponding power to veto any law with which it happened to disagree.  Given the diversity of regional and economic interests, this meant that no truly uniform or effective law could reasonably be enacted.  An effective army could not well be raised for national defense, nor taxes either levied or collected to pay for it.  Nor could the commerce of the national economy be effectively regulated.

Unfortunately, the setting did not make provision for a team bus.  Rather, there were to be essentially 13 separate cab rides to the ballpark, and social chaos was the potential imminent consequence.  The experiment in democracy was in acute danger of failure, the patient on life support.  Accordingly, there was an urgent sense to maintain a state of order and control, or as it has been couched in political terms, to preserve internal political stability.

But what if there were too much order and control?  The corresponding fear in that instance was that the mass of ordinary citizens would be left with a one man wrecking ball, serfs to what we otherwise know as a dictator.  The people of France were to learn this lesson painfully, when their popular revolution, corresponding in time more or less with our own American Revolution, degenerated into mob rule and then eventually the dictatorship of Napoleon.  The French Revolution would later conclude with the anomalous result of the near ruin of Europe in continental military conquest and its people subjected to a military tyrant.

Either extreme presented the founding fathers with vexatious concern for the survival and continuation of the great American experiment in democracy.  The situation was analogous to harnessing the desirable properties of light.  On the one hand, the founding fathers viewed the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation as the futile attempt to illuminate the path with a flashlight which contains failing batteries.  This light simply had neither power nor strength sufficient to provide even minimal let alone adequate illumination.

On the other hand resided the “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” comparison with the ongoing French Revolution, as described in Charles Dickens’ novel, The Tale of Two Cities.  In that situation, the light of democracy had become so supremely concentrated in strength as to represent the immense power of a pure, unfiltered laser beam.  That is to say, if anyone were to fix a gaze directly into the beam or somehow end up in its path, the result would conceive a wrecking ball of disaster.

(Editor’s note:  The second and concluding segment in this two part series guides readers through the horns of the dilemma to its solution.  What was needed was something in between the two undesirable extremes ...)


-Michael D'Angelo