It’s been said often (and correctly) that America is the only nation based not on blood or soil, but on an idea. This being so, we need to be clear what that idea is, and where it is embodied.
When members of the military and government officials are given an oath of office, it is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The idea of America is embodied in its written constitution. This remarkable document (and here I include the Bill of Rights, without which it would not have been ratified), while certainly embodying some ideas from the past, was as a whole absolutely revolutionary at the time of its writing. Even though many nations have now borrowed concepts from the U.S. Constitution, it remains unique in many ways.
Books have been written analyzing the Constitution, and I don’t intend to add much, if anything, to that body of scholarship here – only to enumerate the fundamental ideas of the Constitution that will be most of interest in laying out for posterity those ideas that should be retained at all cost, and those that should be modified to avoid the failures in version 1 that will have necessitated version 2.
- Individual freedom is fundamental
- Limited central government with enumerated powers (10th amendment)
- Federalism
- Separation of powers
- Enumerated rights – speech, religion, press, self-defense, legal due process and property rights (current Amendments 1-2 and 4-8)
- Rights enumeration does not disparage other natural rights (9th amendment)
- Difficult but not impossible to amend
Certainly there are many other important details in the U.S. Constitution (as amended), but this list enumerates most of the distinctives of the document. Any successor document, any constitution for USA version 2, must preserve these at all cost – otherwise, the country is something else, not America.
If version 2 of America someday becomes necessary, though, then it stands to reason that something must be different in the new version. Some changes must be made to ensure that the new USA is even more robust than the current model. The basic idea is to retain the good features (which are many) and make a few minor changes so that the progressive nihilists have even more difficulty in taking over in the new version. They have never been able to do so in a democratic way, by persuasion; they need structural weaknesses to exploit, single points of failure that allow power to be accumulated by undemocratic means. I will discuss a few of these in subsequent posts. I will not be giving “sample language” for any of my suggestions – I am not a lawyer, but I do understand the value of careful crafting of legal language and understand enough of it to know that it’s not in my wheelhouse.
Side note: my recommendations for USA version 2 might well be different from my recommendations for a Convention of States under our current Constitution. Anyone who has ever renovated a house understands the difference between “old work” and “new work.” I’m not even sure that a Convention of States is a good idea, though the threat is useful – the value of the sword of Damocles is not that it falls, but that it hangs.