“Constitution Day has its roots in a holiday once known as "I Am an American Day," designated by Congress in 1940 on the third Sunday in May to commemorate U.S. citizenship. In 1952, Congress, at the urging of an Ohio resident named Olga Weber, moved the day to Sept. 17 and renamed it Constitution Day. Sept. 17 was chosen because it was the last session of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, during which the final version of the newly written Constitution was signed by 39 delegates.
It wasn’t until 2004 that Congress took action again on the day, this time approving a resolution to require that all schools that receive federal funding offer some type of “educational program” on the Constitution. The law doesn’t define what those lessons should be — and there is no penalty for not doing it — but across the country, schools at all grade levels have found ways to teach and learn about the Constitution.”
The article from which the above paragraphs was taken—“Nine myths about the U.S. Constitution,” by Valerie Strauss—offers a broad overview of the Constitution’s authorship, signatories, and contents. The totality of articles, papers, books and media searches about the Constitution probably are more numerous than the population of the United States itself (a Google search query on “U.S. Constitution” returned 357 million hits). It is safe to say that among purely secular texts, copies of the U.S. Constitution—from convenient coat-pocket versions to exquisitely engrossed replicas--exceed the number of almost any other federal document, save, perhaps, the Declaration of Independence.
I’m guessing that despite the easy availability of the Constitution, e.g. https://constitutionus.com/, it is probably not as thoroughly read more than two centuries later as the Founders might have hoped it would be back in 1787. In truth, it wasn’t all that appreciated at the time of its signing, and, except for those self-minted Americans who could read and who had the wherewithal to own a copy, the text of the Constitution was elusive and limited to state houses, courthouses, libraries (such as they were), publishers, and institutions of higher learning. And yet that final draft of the Constitution (plus the Bill of Rights), along with the Declaration of Independence and (in my opinion) the Federalist Papers, define the bedrock principles and pillars of republican (lowercase r) ideals upon which the whole of our democracy rests.
For me, Constitution Day is every day, and September 17 is merely a convenient bookmark in the 365-page year. To my mind, the Constitution is a living document that informs me in some way almost daily. I am not a strict constructionist, conservative textualist, or a liberal interpreter of the Constitution. To me, the document and all its Amendments, along with the Federalist Papers (which serve as a roadmap to understanding the mindsets of—and the debates among—the Founders), represents the struggle of a very small group of humanly-flawed, morally-conflicted men to create an enduring secular canon capable of encompassing both their world of privilege and the more commonplace world of the average colonist—the new Americans.
There should be no more intellectual oxygen left in any conversation about the moral rectitude or lack thereof of the Constitution’s authors and signatories. We in the 21st century, fraught as our time is with racism, gender and income inequality, isolationism, and fear-mongering false-prophet boogeymen migrating from left to right (to mention but a few of our “modern” failings), do not own—nor have we earned--sufficient righteousness or purity of character to sneer at the long-term value of the Constitution viewed through the clouded glass of slavery and misogyny that so often obscures the overarching intent of imperfect Founders.
Imperfect Founders. Why do I seem to fall back on that so much? Well, let’s look at the Preamble to the Constitution for a clue:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect [my italics] Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
“…in order to form a more perfect union….” Not a perfect union, but a more perfect union. Think about that specific coupling. It tell us that the Founders could not claim the new nation was perfect right from the start; they could not say that every aspect of the Constitution they had written described an already perfect union; they could only lay claim to laying out a plan for aspiring to perfection, which is a perfectly human goal.
When I was a freshman at a Jesuit high school in Shreveport, Louisiana in the early 1960s (I am not a Catholic, but the school was guided by principles my father believed would prepare me in ways the public schools at the time in Shreveport could not—in his opinion), I was given an English assignment to write a short essay—probably 250-300 words. I wrote the paper, turned it in, and the next day it was handed back to me with a 99 on it. I looked for the offending error, a mark that pointed to some grammar or spelling flaw, but I could not find any marked error. That night at home, my parents looked the paper over and, being pretty good writers themselves, they, too, worried over the missing percentage point and absence of some sort of mark or teacher’s notation that explained the 99.
After class the following day, I approached my teacher, Father Elsner (who was also the Prefect of Discipline) and asked him to show me the error in my paper. Without looking down at the essay, Father Elsner said, “Moore, it is only in the next life that we will achieve perfection.” It was a lesson in humility—spiritual and secular—that I never forgot, even though I did rate 100s from Father Elsner over the course of my time at Jesuit.
The phrase, “in order to form a more perfect union” is, to me, a clear call for individual and collective humility as we work to perfect the living fabric of our laws and governing principles. It is doubtful we will ever achieve a perfect union because we are a nation of imperfect citizens and imperfect leaders. That is not, perforce, a denigration; it is, to my mind, a challenge from the Founders.
The authors of the Preamble gave themselves, and us, a goal to aspire to a more perfect union with every helpful law made, every bad law repealed, every amendment added, every amendment crossed out. One only has to read the Federalist Papers to understand the struggles the Constitution’s authors endured as they turned the Rubik’s Cube of a democratic republic over and over, shaping their arguments to fit not only the crises of their time, but the crises they knew were sure to arise in a distant future.
One of my favorite songs from the musical “Hamilton” is “Dear Theodosia,” a duet sung by Hamilton and Burr. In it, both men sing to their children, Philip Hamilton and Theodosia Burr, born after the Revolution, and what the world for their children could be like if the Founders’ dreams are realized.
“If we lay a strong enough foundation….” is what Constitution Day is all about. The Constitution is a strong foundation for which much blood has been shed and for which, by oath, much great immortal honor has been earned. On this day—and on every day—let us not point out our imperfections with epithets, blame, and rancor, but let us, instead, aspire to continue in the work of the Founders and strive together to form a more perfect union for the generations to come. If we can hew to that often-rugged road, someday, someday, our children’s children will blow us all away.
One of my favorite songs from the musical “Hamilton” is “Dear Theodosia,” a duet sung by Hamilton and Burr. In it, both men sing to their children, Philip Hamilton and Theodosia Burr, born after the Revolution, and what the world for their children could be like if the Founders’ dreams are realized.
“You will come of age with our young nation
We'll bleed and fight for you,
we'll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We'll pass it on to you,
we'll give the world to you
And you'll blow us all away
Someday, someday
Yeah, you'll blow us all away
Someday, someday”
“If we lay a strong enough foundation….” is what Constitution Day is all about. The Constitution is a strong foundation for which much blood has been shed and for which, by oath, much great immortal honor has been earned. On this day—and on every day—let us not point out our imperfections with epithets, blame, and rancor, but let us, instead, aspire to continue in the work of the Founders and strive together to form a more perfect union for the generations to come. If we can hew to that often-rugged road, someday, someday, our children’s children will blow us all away.
