SHOULD WE REVITALIZE THE UNITED STATES WITH A RENEWED CONSTITUTION…

Our country is wracked by in-fighting between the parties in Congress and the President and the Department of Defence and the Supreme Court and all the States. Is it necessary to take a new look at our Constitution? I know it would be difficult to bring all the parties concerned together, but that is the problem isn’t it. Our Founding Fathers, it is understood, did not believe that our Constitution should operate unchanged...nothing is that perfect. In fact many left words of encouragement to make that a regular process. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force not of right.” Many others voiced the same sentiment.

Larry Sabato has penned a brilliant new book named “A More Perfect Constitution" that addresses this. In it he proposes 23 ways to revitalize and make fairer our great country. He suggests, for instance, reforming both the House and the Senate, changing term limits of the House, altering the presidential term to six years, war-making revisions. And in the Supreme Court having fixed terms instead of life tenure, allowing them to serve later in life, mending the Electoral College, allowing Universal Service for citizens, and even calling regular constitutional conventions where timidity, which is deep in our leaders conscience, would be a thing of the past.

So many of our Founders embraced the same idea we said earlier. Somehow we have gotten off the track, over the years. We are and have been the envy of the world with our stabilty of governing. But as Larry Sabato reminds us, we have to find a way to make ourselves more governable. Make ourselves able to be flexible for the times. That is not to say we throw out the “baby with the bathwater,” but we should look at the times and adjust accordingly. It will take courage, but who among us will take up the challenge? Maybe some 15 year old today, who will grow into maturity, will be the one to sieze the moment and make us even greater than we are today.