Constitutional Convention 2021?
The United States Constitution is an amazing document, and is a combination of not just governmental structure but of philosophical development. As much as people may hate some of the Founding Fathers for various reasons, James Madison did an amazing job of codifying a system of government that was based upon some of the most influential philosophical thoughts of the day. The system set out in the United States Constitution has survived since 1788, but it is time to lock 100–200 more folks into a hot, sweaty building with no air conditioning and to create the American Constitution all over again. It’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.
Before you cry out “You're a communist! Do you have no respect for history?! You hate America! yada, yada, yada”, this idea is actually much more American than keeping the same document for over 230 years. Thomas Paine (Common Sense, American Crisis, Rights of Man, and many more) argued that one generation cannot bind the next generation into its laws or government, nor should a current generation be forced into following the laws of the previous generation without questioning or re-giving consent. John Locke (Two Treatise on Government, and many more) was by far the most influential philosopher to the Founding Fathers, so much so that they copied some of his work word-for-word into the Declaration of Independence. Both of these men strongly believed that every generation should have either a revolution or the chance to approve or revoke the laws of the old government according to their preference. This would ensure that every person had the ability to freely enter into a society. James Madison and his buddies agreed with that belief, hence there is a whole portion of the US Constitution on how to change or recreate the system (Article V, although that shouldn’t matter as the US Constitution was written and approved contrary to the process laid out in the Articles of Confederation, so why follow the rules now?).
Now what could we change with a new Constitution? A lot, but let’s start with some simple ones. We could update the language so that it is more gender and race neutral. We don’t need to list all pronouns, just use words such as “citizen” and “person”. Oh, and maybe define them if they are different so confusion is kept to a minimum. After 230 years of using court cases to determine and develop law, why not codify all of those decisions into the new Constitution in order to make them more easily identified. This also allows us the opportunity to throw out old case decisions that are moot (ex: Dred Scott case). We could also update the Constitution to the technologies of today and tomorrow to settle issues such as intellectual property rights online, privacy issues, etc. With 230 additional years of collective knowledge and developments in political thought and experimentation, there are bound to be ways in which we can improve this country.
There are many things we dislike about our current political system, such as the Electoral College, the two party systems that developed, powerful special interest groups, career politicians, and the scope of the government to name a few. By utilizing a Constitutional Convention we could update or do away with things such as the Electoral College and the two-party system, and create a system where special interest groups may not have the power and sway they have today. We won’t be able to solve all the ills of government, but we can make some of them more bearable.
Now, one thing the Founding Fathers developed that has made this country truly great was to create a republic, not a democracy. This was to keep the majority and minority on equal standing, and to prevent the minority from being trampled should the majority feel so inclined. We can see the need for such a structure today in a time of a very vicious two-party system that has developed, against the wishes of the founders. One of the ways the founders developed a republic system was through the Electoral College, which tied votes for the President to the number of representatives the states possessed within the US Congress. Today, that system does provide much more power to voters within certain low population states over the selection of the President and the leanings of the executive branches of government. To more evenly spread the power to the citizens, why not adjust the Electoral College votes to allow each Electoral College vote to be given based upon the winner of the Congressional district, not of the whole state. The remaining two votes could be given to the overall popular vote winner of that state. Let’s break those big groups of Electoral Votes up into individual votes that must be competed for each election. That will tie the popular vote to that of the Electoral College, and still maintain the structure of the republic the founder’s designed.
To aid in the decrease of partisanship and the two-party system, we should restructure our national government into a system where each state’s representatives in the House of Representatives is proportional the percentage of the votes each party receives. In this system third and minority parties can more easily lend their voices to the national stage. Imagine a system where no one party has the majority of Congressional votes, and new laws must be made by working with other parties to decide what is best for the nation. This change would help to decrease the partisanship, due to the need for parties to work together in order to create a majority.
A Constitutional Convention is no easy task, and would likely take months to develop a system and equally as long to approve the new system. States would have to choose representatives to send to the convention, and those would be people who would be able to give and take in order to develop this new system. Do politicians who care about their constituency and not the party line still exist? They do, but usually they are not at the national level. We must find those people, and put them together to help create a better America. We should never be afraid to change, adjust, or replace our nation’s systems in order to improve, and every generation should have the chance to create a society in which they want to live. Nothing is more American than meeting in a brick building in the midst of a hot, humid summer, closing the windows, and figuring out how to create and run a nation. Why don’t we try it again? Who knows, we may be able to make some changes that last for another 230 years.