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This
revolutionary notion has stood the test of time.
By Lee Hamilton. June 30, 2003
Every summer
as the Fourth of July approaches, I'm struck by how inadequate
a label "Independence Day" is. This isn't to downplay
the courage of our Founders in declaring independence from Britain
or fighting a war to guarantee it. But what we're really celebrating
isn't a war; it's a concept.
What was truly
revolutionary about the American Revolution was the notion it
enshrined that in a legitimate government, neither Congress nor
the president is supreme because the ultimate authority lies with
the people. We take this idea for granted, along with our system
of representative democracy, because none of us has seen any other
form of government in America and because most nations today are
ruled by some sort of popularly elected legislature. Yet, at the
time our system was created, nothing was quite like what the Framers
devised, and certainly there were no models of such ambitious
scope. The conventional wisdom of the day was that democracy on
any but the smallest scale would quickly devolve into anarchy
and mob rule.
"Again
and again," historian Bernard Bailyn wrote about the Founders,
"they were warned of the folly of defying the received traditions,
the sheer unlikelihood that they, obscure people on the outer
borderlands of European civilization, knew better than the established
authorities that ruled them; that they could successfully create
something freer, ultimately more enduring than what was then known
in the centers of metropolitan life."
The great
phrases of the day ring through our history: "We the people,"
"consent of the governed," "blessings of liberty,"
"a more perfect union." These are words we live by,
embodying the civic faith to which all Americans adhere. Our system
rests squarely on the belief that freedom can exist only when
one is governed with one's consent and with a voice in government.
No one, the Founders believed, is good enough to govern another
person without this consent, and they embedded this concept in
the bones of our system. Just as important, they rested our leaders'
authority not on personal traits, but on the offices they hold
-- offices whose powers are laid out in the Constitution.
The question
the Framers grappled with was how to ensure that people's views
were reflected in government. They recognized that direct democracy
had its limits. Direct democracy might work for a small community
whose citizens had the time and education to study their options
before voting on how to proceed, but in a complex society, it
had severe drawbacks. The Founders wanted to guard against the
tyranny of the majority, to ensure that passions of the moment
could be cooled in deliberate debate and that the voice of the
minority could be heard and its rights protected.
So they opted
for representative democracy, in which the people choose elected
representatives to carry their voices to Washington. This "representative
assembly," John Adams wrote, "should be in miniature,
an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel,
reason and act like them." Above all, it would be accountable
to them.
This is the
American experiment. No one knew whether dividing power among
various branches and levels of government would ensure popular
freedom and political ingenuity. No one knew whether, over the
course of decades and centuries, the two tyrannies feared by the
Founders -- that of a strong executive and that of a strong popular
majority -- could be constrained by a written constitution.
And no one
knew whether Congress would, in fact, reflect the will of a diverse
society. At any given moment in our history, we could find Americans
who would argue that the experiment was in danger of failing.
Yet ours is now the oldest written national constitution still
in use, and its legitimacy remains solid. It has stood the test
of time. But that does not guarantee it will stand all tests of
the future. We must never abandon our determination to make it
a more perfect union.
Hamilton
is the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center on Congress
at Indiana University. He served as a U.S. representative from
Indiana from 1965 to 1999. Reprinted from the Indianapolis Star
with permission. http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/2/054335-1832-021.html
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