By Thomas Neuburger
Each year on this day,
Americans celebrate our founding principles and the birth of our nation, but in
these chaotic and polarized days, it is also important to remember that the
United States was born from a crisis of unity and has experienced two more at
roughly 70-year intervals — the Civil War and the Great Depression.
Both nearly tore us apart, yet
each sparked a civic rebirth. After each great rupture, the government was
restructured; each took the nation closer to its founding ideals; each brought
greater liberty, justice and opportunity to expanding groups of Americans; each
changed forever and for the better the relationship between government and the
people.
We’re now in the midst of a
fourth crisis, from which will emerge the next agreement about how and for whom
our government operates. Will it produce a constitution that once again
advances our founding principles and expands opportunities, or will this be the
first American crisis that institutionalizes a stripping of rights, freedom and
wealth?
In past crises, the nation
found the will and leadership to correct its course. Will we be so blessed
again?
More fundamentally, will the
structure of our present political process allow us to select the right leader,
should she or he emerge? Or will the power brokers of our parties work to
eliminate the candidacy of a potential Washington, Lincoln or Roosevelt?
A nation’s constitution is not
just contained in a document but includes as well the practices and agreements
that determine how government operates and what it’s permitted to do. In that
sense we’ve been governed not by one constitution but by three.
The first grew out of armed
revolt against the British Crown, but it also sprang from revolt by the
emerging manufacturing and merchant classes against colonial status. Americans
wanted to compete alongside the British economy and not be forced into the role
of mere consumers.
From that revolution came the
original U.S. Constitution — slave-enabling and voter-restricting, yes, but
largely democratic — and from its government came the policies of Alexander
Hamilton, which gave American manufacturing its first strong boost.
The second constitutional
agreement grew from a mainly nonviolent revolt in the North against slavery, an
institution that sustained the Southern economy. This threat to slavery
produced a bloody Southern revolt against the national government. The social
aspects of that conflict still rip our society, but the constitution that
emerged — that of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments — was radically different:
It abolished slavery, established equal protection as a fundamental right and
greatly expanded the vote.
Each of the first two crises
broke into violence — the Revolutionary War, the Civil War — before producing
constitutional change. The third, the Great Depression, also produced a
revolution of our politics and governance, but one in which violence was
averted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election and bow to the need for a
restructured government. This led to vast reforms, citizen-protecting
regulation and the economic-opportunity programs known as the New Deal.
Each crisis resulted in a
constitution that brought us closer to our principles: the original
Constitution bound the separate states into one country; through amendment an
anti-slavery document replaced the pro-slavery original; and through
reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause and other changes, the New Deal
constitution overturned the laissez-faire government from which it evolved.
Through each, the nation
righted itself. Crucially, success also depended on the emergence of the right
political leader — and by the people’s ability to elect him.
Our nation is once more in the
grip of division and change. When we emerge, the United States will be
different. Our government and society will once more be restructured and new
rules will be decided.
