The question facing America as the Constitutional Convention deliberated from May to September, 1787, was what kind of country the Founding Fathers would create for the nation. American patriots had won their freedom in a war of independence from England from 1775 until the Treaty of Paris in 1883, led by Commander-in-Chief and later President General George Washington, then and now the Greatest American.
The answer to that question in 1787 was a constitutional republic of limited central (or “federal”) government restrained in its authority to certain enumerated powers, only. Authority for governance, except for matters expressly enumerated as held by the central government, was to remain with the States and “the people.” This limitation on the federal government’s power would be expressly commanded by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which would follow with the adoption of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791.
Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. when asked by a citizen on the close of the Constitutional Convention, “what kind of a government have you created, Mr. Franklin?,” famously answered:
“A republic, Madam —if you can keep it.”
Ben Franklin’s challenge, “if you can keep it,” was serious: The United States of America was then the only Constitutional Republic, created “on the consent of the governed,” in the world. There was extreme doubt if this American great experiment in freedom, could succeed. The generation of the Founding Fathers did “keep it,” and bequeathed it to us of this generation as their progeny, their descendants in freedom. Will we “keep it” for the generations of Americans who will come after us?
That is, the question facing America on September 17, 2017, is whether Americans can keep the free constitutional republic of limited central government powers created under the leadership of the Founding Fathers; or whether America will continue to be “transformed” into a socialist state, with the federal government ignoring the Constitution’s limitations on its authority and expanding to control, regulate, or dictate seemingly all areas of American life, in the name of “social justice,” transforming the nation from individual freedom and personal responsibility under a limited government, to Socialism, what famed economist the late Frederick Hayek aptly named “the road to serfdom.”
While the election of President Donald Trump in November, 2016, represents a defeat for Progressive Liberals seeking to “fundamentally transform” America, as former President Barak Hussein Obama put it, into a European-style Socialist State, the foaming-at-the-mouth backlash against the election of President Trump, an avowed “America First” patriot, by Progressive Liberals in the government, media, and academia, as well as avowed Socialists, Communists, Liberal Fascists and Black racial supremacists like the Black Lies Matter Movement reacting violently in the streets, evidence that the fight “to keep” the Constitutional Republic the Founding Fathers created must continue to be waged vigorously if America is not be be “transformed” from a free Constitutional Republic to Socialism.
Ever since the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, liberal “Progressives” have sought to undermine the Constitution, and the individual freedom and personal responsibility it at once protects and requires, and instead, by creeping incremental expansion of federal government authority, transform the nation from freedom of thought, religion, conscience, and enterprise, into government-dominated Socialism, all in the name of “social justice.” In that regard, Founding Father Ben Franklin observed also that “those who would exchange freedom for security, will have neither.”
Progressive Liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson was the first U.S. President to openly argue that the Constitution should be discarded as outdated, and be replaced in by an “Administrative State” in which an elite ruling class of political and academic “experts” heading central (federal) government bureaucracies will create an American socialist utopia, from food stamps to to foreign policy, intruding into and dominating almost every aspect of American life.
An indication of the liberal “progressives” success in transforming American from the vision of the Founding Fathers into their own liberal “progressive” vision of a soft totalitarian state led by “experts,” i.e., themselves, is that few American children in government schools dominated by liberal “progressive” teachers and education bureaucrats, will be taught on Constitution Day 2017, or any day, of the historic importance of September 17, 1787, for our nation, and for the world. Consider just these aspects of that American history on this September 17:
On September 17, 1787, after weeks of often bitter debate by delegates of the States gathered at the Constitutional Convention at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Constitution of the United States, beginning with the words, “We, the People,” was signed by thirty-nine of the fifty-five delegates. The world was changed forever as America began its ‘great experiment’ in self-government.
Never before had a constitution been established in the name of “the People” of a nation, rather than by and in the name of a monarch, a state, or other governmental power. Many of the most erudite thinkers of the so-called “Age of Enlightenment,” did not believe that a constitutional republic of limited government “by, for, and of the people” could survive in a broad land containing a large and diverse population. America is still an ongoing experiment in liberty.
The Constitutional Convention had commenced on May 14, 1787, with a challenge to the conscience and integrity of delegates by George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army which had won the Revolutionary war. Washington, then and now the model American patriot, was elected President of the Constitutional Convention by unanimous vote.
“If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the Hand of God,” said Washington, who would later become the First President of the United States and be regarded as “the Father of his country.”
The delegates were learned American patriots who had studied history deeply to meet the task of creating a constitution fit for a free people. Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence but did not participate in the Constitutional Convention because he was in Paris representing the United States, wrote of the delegates with utmost respect as “a gathering of demigods.”
The Constitution the framers wrought in the name of “We, the People,” was one creating a government of expressly limited powers – a limited federal government, not a national government of self-expanding powers.
The subsequently adopted “Bill of Rights,” contained in the First Ten Amendments, for which the efforts of James Madison earned him recognition as “the Father of the Constitution,” begin with five words limiting powers of the federal government over the people:
“Congress shall make no law…,” respecting an establishment of religion nor abridging the fundamental rights of free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of petition for redress of grievance.”
These are rights which the Founding Fathers believed Americans were “endowed by their Creator,” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That is, the Founders believed these were natural rights, rights granted by the “hand of God, not the hand of a generous government.,” as the late President John F. Kennedy would express it.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments reinforced the words “Congress shall make no law…” by mandating that the people and the states retained all rights not enumerated as possessed by the central government.
Never before in history had “We, the people,” had their natural rights so expressly protected by a constitution so expressly limiting the government as to its powers. By changing the relationship of the people and their government, limiting the power of government and making the retained rights of the people superior, the Founding Fathers changed the world. Ever after, the people of the world who have dreamed of the freedoms of Americans, have looked to the values expressed in the American Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution, as a model for liberty in a constitutional republic.
The framers of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers of America, were faced with a great challenge, and they met it. The Constitution which they framed was finally ratified by all states by January 10, 1791.
It has now endured for 230 years since it was signed on Sept. 17, 1787. That, the keeping of the free constitutional republic that the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us, is our challenge.
We owe a great debt to all those Founding Fathers and other Americans who came before us who preserved our freedom. We pay that debt by what we do to preserve freedom for those Americans who will come after us.
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY FOREVER; SURRENDER TO TYRANNY—NEVER!
© 2017 Rees Lloyd – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Rees Lloyd: reeslloyd@aol.com
