There are those who, at times, it seems wish to deify the ‘founding fathers.‘ Certainly for the oasis of liberty they created amid a sea of dictatorships heredity (King George) and otherwise, we owe an unrepayable debt. The same for the majesty of our Constitution, a mere post-it note in length to the War and Peace-sized treatise which is the constitution of the European Union.
Why should we care what the founding fathers said, what they wrote, twelve generations ago in a world unrecognizable today? Because of the profound and fundamental subtext of the Constitution: A wise and healthy distrust of power, and of man’s tendency to accumulate power and never willingly part with it.
Ours is a system of limited government. We know this (but do not think much on it) from the one part of high school civics that stays with us: that the three branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other.
Our government exists by the consent of the governed.
The only powers of the government are those the people have expressly ceded.
If Congress, or Congress acting with a President, can do whatever they wish, they have unlimited power. Absurd, no?
The words of the Constitution are not deliberately vague so that they can be recast to suit the wishes/needs/desires of each shift in the political winds. To accept such a premise is to dismiss the Constitution’s Amendment process as needless surplusage in an otherwise brief, concise document. Why should any amendment be necessary if a simple majority of elected representatives acting with a President can decide what powers they have every two years or so?
No. We look to the words of those who crafted the Constitution -- probably the greatest work of any committee, ever -- to see if they intended to cede to Congress the limited right to act... to assert power, to exercise control, over our lives.
The founding fathers are neither deities nor just dead old white guys, they are the embodiment -- the voice of limited government.