I have Stories to Tell and Books on Amazon

Please, in the left column, click on Books on Amazon and check out the books I have written. I am sure you will enjoy them.


Wednesday, May 3, 2017

America and the Beauty of the Constitution

The other day, our President actually said that he found the constraints put on him by the Constitution to be frustrating. He seems to be missing an important little thing. That is the point of much of the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers, a remarkable group of human beings, feared strong leaders. They also feared the emotions of the people. A combination of strong leadership. playing on strong emotions in the populace, is dangerous, very dangerous. So, they devised away to keep sanity in charge.

First, and I wish folks would get this, we are not a democracy. We are a representational republic that uses democratic voting to choose representatives. When you vote for Congressmen and Senators, you are electing representatives and when you vote for President, you are voting, not directly for a candidate, you are voting for a representative in the Electoral College, who will then vote for your candidate. This was done to prevent huge states from being overly dominant. Yes, it produces the occasional anomaly, like Trump, but on the whole, it works well.

Now, the constitution sets up checks and balances. The Judicial, Executive, and Legislative Branches each has their function and each watches the other. In essence, it prevents any one group from becoming overly dominant.  As a result, we govern by conversing, arguing, and ultimately, reaching compromises. No body gets everything they want, nor should they. A Texas rancher and a New York stock broker have very different interests and to accommodate every one is not possible at the Federal level. That is why the Fathers left a lot of issues up to the States.

The system set up by our Constitution is absolutely brilliant and I am very glad that Trump feels frustrated. He is supposed to; that's how things were set up. Let's keep things that way.

We do not want a Nation where the emotions of the population converge with the plans of a strong leader. The World saw that about 80 years ago in Germany and things did not end well.

No comments:

Post a Comment