The U.S. Constitution Failed For Two Reasons

The purpose of the U.S. Constitution was, and still is, to create a republic of the several States.  We persist in that dream.  The reality is that it is only a dream. The Constitution exists in our consciences, and in our determination to make the dream come true.

In today’s world, the language of the Constitution is too soft, too suggestive of what might be thought of as preferences rather than obligations. For example, it says that a Congressional District of under 30,000 people might be unnecessarily small.  Another example, for a more perfect union, the people should be divided into districts that are equal in population. And a third example, the officialdom of the federation should be chosen by a collegiate body of reps.

These brief words having broad implications are all right there in the original Constitution. The Founders were state delegations issuing instructions to each other.  If they had implemented their Constitution in the same seriousness as they wrote it, we would not be in the political mess we are in today.

Instead of the Constitution’s Congressional District of about 40,000 persons,  today’s district has 700,000 persons. That’s over twenty times the community size that the Founders originally chose. We have allowed Congressmen to conspire together and corrupt shapes and sizes of Congressional Districts to the point that once they achieve name recognition on the ballot, they have life tenure. The cry for term limits would not be necessary if each local community were controlling its own rep. County election departments where a district is located, should be setting up these districts.

Further, every local community has been forced into the arms of Democrats and Republicans and others who hold political conventions that contravene the Constitution’s Electoral College conventions.  These partisans will lose their influence, once the district size is returned to “something over 30,000.”

Partisans have embedded themselves in the county elections process by choosing who shall be on the partisan primary election ballot. The only reason that they are able to do this is because the original district obscenely multiplied in size. The Electoral College has been much maligned by the partisans because it is the alternative to partisanship.  The two are mutual enemies. If the Founders’ Constitution were being truly implemented, there would be no need for political parties. All elections would be local ones where the people have other ways of deciding how to vote.  We are able to choose a dentist, mayor, sheriff, grocer, repairman, spouse, or pastor, all without the help from a political party. The community network is more trustworthy.

Voters manage their local elections without the rancor and hatred that partisans incite in national elections. Local elections should be electing the reps. The entire federation of fifty-one governments is on the shoulders of those reps. They are the elites, the paid professionals who have the full responsibility. The grassroots voters pass judgment on them every two years.

What are the two reasons the Constitution has failed?  (1) It failed to achieve the true Congressional District, the one that organizes all the people into one set of home districts whose reps rule all fifty-one governments of the federation. And (2) It failed to control partisanship by continuously monitoring the proper size that a Congressional District should be in order to keep it locally controlled.

Let’s assume that the Founders and their Constitution wanted their Congressional district to be like a home district by which the people could have their more perfect union.  Let’s assume that their primary goal was to establish a workable federation among what are now fifty-one governments; and that all of these governments were to be run by one set of reps on call from their respective Governors and President.

Let’s accept our share of the guilt for not properly implementing the Constitution. Our perspective is far more intelligent than that of 13 scared and doubtful states of 1789. So long as the Constitution is not properly implemented, everybody shares the guilt for not getting it properly implemented.

The State Reps should feel the guiltiest of all for perpetrating a districting hoax on their people. They have a duty to reconcile their inferior constitutions to the superior Constitution which calls for equalized districting throughout the land. And it is their obligation to help establish a workable federation of states.