5000 Year Leap (4 page)

   The object of the Founders was to seek a consensus or general agreement on what the Constitution should provide. After four months of debate they were able to reach general agreement on just about everything except the issues of slavery, proportionate representation, and the regulation of commerce. All three of these issues had to be settled by compromise.

   It is a mistake however, to describe the rest of the Constitution as a "conglomerate of compromises," because extreme patience was used to bring the minds of the delegates into agreement rather than simply force the issue to finality with a compromise. This is demonstrated in the fact that over 60 ballots were taken before they resolved the issue of how to elect the President. They could have let the matter lie after the first ballot, but they did not. They were anxious to talk it out until the vast majority felt good about the arrangement. That is why it took 60 ballots to resolve the matter.

   When the Founders had finished their work on September 17, 1787, President Washington attached a letter to the signed draft and sent it to the Congress. The Congress ratified the Constitution without any changes and sent it to the states. When several of the larger states threatened to reject the Constitution, they were invited to ratify the main body of the Constitution but attach suggested amendments. They submitted 189! At the first session of Congress, these suggested amendments were reduced to 12 by James Madison, and 10 of them were finally approved and ratified by the states. Thus was born America's famous Bill of Rights.

   This was the polemic process by which the Founders struggled to get the American eagle firmly planted in the balanced center of the political spectrum. James Madison later described the division of labor between the states and the federal government as follows:

   "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
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   The fixing of the American eagle in the center of the spectrum was designed to maintain this political equilibrium between the people in the states and the federal government. The idea was to keep the power base close to the people. The emphasis was on strong local self-government. The states would be responsible for internal affairs and the federal government would confine itself to those areas which could not be fairly or effectively handled by the individual states. This made the Founders' political spectrum look approximately like this:

   Although Polybius, John Locke, and Baron Charles de Montesquieu had all advocated the separation of the governmental functions into three departments -- legislative, executive, and judicial -- the American Founders were the first to carefully structure what might be described as a three-headed eagle.

   The central head was the law-making or legislative function with two eyes -- the House and the Senate -- and these must both see eye-to-eye on any piece of legislation before it can become law. A second head is the administrative or Executive Department with all authority centered in a single, strong President, operating within a clearly defined framework of limited power. The third head is the judiciary, which was assigned the task of acting as guardian of the Constitution and the interpretation of its principles as originally designed by the Founders.

   The genius of this three-headed eagle was not only the separation of powers but the fact that all three heads operated through a single neck. By this means the Founders carefully integrated these three departments so that each one was coordinated with the others and could not function independently of them. It was an ingeniously structured pattern of political power which might be described as "coordination without consolidation."

   The Founder's view of their new form of government can be further demonstrated by using the symbol of the eagle and referring to its two wings:

   Wing #1 of the eagle might be referred to as the problem solving wing or the wing of compassion. Those who function through this dimension of the system are sensitive to the unfulfilled needs of the people. They dream of elaborate plans to solve these problems.

   Wing #2 has the responsibility of conserving the nation's resources and the people's freedom. Its function is to analyze the programs of wing #1 with two questions. First, can we afford it? Secondly, what will it do to the rights and individual freedom of the people?

   Now, if both of these wings fulfill their assigned function, the American eagle will fly straighter and higher than any civilization in the history of the world. But if either of these wings goes to sleep on the job, the American eagle will drift toward anarchy or tyranny. For example, if wing #1 becomes infatuated with the idea of solving all the problems of the nation regardless of the cost, and wing #2 fails to bring its power into play to sober the problem-solvers with a more realistic approach, the eagle will spin off toward the left, which is tyranny.

   On the other hand, if wing #1 fails to see the problems which need solving and wing #2 becomes inflexible in its course of not solving problems simply to save money, or not disturb the status quo, then the machinery of government loses its credibility and the eagle drifts over toward the right where the people decide to take matters into their own hands. This can eventually disintegrate into anarchy.

   When Thomas Jefferson became President, he used his first inaugural address to describe the need to make room for the problem-solving wing, to which his own Democratic-Republican party belonged, and also make room for the conservation wing, to which the Federalist party of John Adams belonged. He tried to stress the fact that all Americans should have some elements of both of these party dimensions in their thinking. In his inaugural address he said:

   "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans -- we are all Federalists."
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   Nevertheless, Jefferson saw fringe elements in both of these parties which were political extremists. In the Federalist party were those who would pull the eagle away from its balanced center toward the tyrannical left and form a central government so strong that it would border on a monarchy. Concerning the monarchist fringe of the Federalist party, he wrote:

   "I have spoken of the Federalists as if they were a homogeneous body, but this is not the truth. Under that name lurks the heretical sect of monarchists. Afraid to wear their own name, they creep under the mantle of Federalism, and the Federalists, like sheep permit the fox to take shelter among them, when pursued by dogs. These men have no right to office. If a monarchist be in office, anywhere, and it be known to the President, the oath he has taken to support the Constitution imperiously requires the instantaneous dismission of such officer; and I hold the President criminal if he permitted such to remain. To appoint a monarchist to conduct the affairs of a republic, is like appointing an atheist to the priesthood. As to the real federalists, I take them to my bosom as brothers. I view them as honest men, friends to the present Constitution."
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   Jefferson reports a conversation with President Washington in August 1793 in which Jefferson expressed deep concern that some elements of the President's administration were pushing toward oppressive monarchial-type powers. The President immediately responded that republican principles must be maintained and that "the Constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep it where it is." With reference to the possibility of a monarchial party arising, President Washington stated that "there was not a man in the United States who would set his face more decidedly against it than himself." Jefferson nevertheless pointed out to the President that:

   "There does not pass a week, in which we cannot prove declarations dropping from the monarchical party [the branch of the administration pushing for a central government with massive powers and saying] that our government is good for nothing, is a milk and water thing which cannot support itself, we must knock it down, and set up something of more energy. President Washington replied that if anyone were guilty of such nonsense, it would be "a proof of their insanity."
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   In May 1805, while serving as President, Jefferson wrote to Dr. George Logan. He was concerned with elements of extremism pushing toward the extreme right which, to the Founders, meant "anarchy." He wrote:

   "I see with infinite pain the bloody schism which has taken place among our friends in Pennsylvania and New York, and will probably take place in other States. The main body of both sections mean well, but their good intentions will produce great public evil."
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Like President Washington, Jefferson saw the need for maintaining the government in the balanced center where the Constitution had placed it. He wrote to Governor George Clinton in 1803, "Our business is to march straight forward ... without either turning to the right or left."
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   With both of the eagle's wings flying -- one solving problems, the other preserving resources and freedom -- the American future could not help but ascend to unprecedented heights of wealth and influence.

   Since the genius of the American system is maintaining the eagle in the balanced center of the spectrum, the Founders warned against a number of temptations which might lure subsequent generations to abandon their freedoms and their rights by subjecting themselves to a strong federal administration operating on the collectivist Left.

   They warned against the "welfare state" where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave. Jefferson wrote:

   "If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
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   They warned against confiscatory taxation and deficit spending. Jefferson said it was immoral for one generation to pass on the results of its extravagance in the form of debts to the next generation. He wrote: "... we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life [expectancy] of the majority."
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   Every generation of Americans struggled to pay off the national debt up until the present one.