A Letter to the Founders

Dear Founders,

Enclosed please find the Constitution of the United States that you developed for us over two hundred years ago. This document is being returned because, regrettably, we no longer find it relevant to our situation.

When first implemented, the ideals of individual liberty and limited government expressed by your design worked pretty well for us. In fact, during the first one hundred plus years of the Constitution's existence, our country became the most productive country on earth. Much wealth was created.

As you know, wealth attracts envy, along with scores of people (big business, social reformers, those with less, even government officials themselves) who wouldn't mind a slice of wealth pie to advance their own desires. Human nature, really. Government, of course, was the ideal agent for redistributing the wealth. However, your original intent and wording of the Constitution did not provide much wiggle room for doing what we wanted to do without breaking the law.

Beginning in the early 20th century, therefore, we embarked on a program to render the Constitution obsolete.

At first, we followed the processes that you had specified for changing the law. In 1913, for example, we passed the Sixteenth Amendment to give the Federal government legal power to appropriate property from the citizenry on a large scale. Evoking the name of Progress, you see, proved to be an effective rationalization for this and other 'reforms' made around this time. 

Going the formal route proved a risky proposition, however. Some people expressed concern that their rights were being violated. And occaisionally the Supreme Court would reject a legal measure as unconstitutional.

All of this slowed Progress.

So we began to subvert Constitutional procedure. It began with a  media campaign that questioned the validity of the Constitution in the modern world. Then, during times of economic or military distress, the government learned that it could greatly increase its scope of operations when people felt fearful or threatened. On such occaisions, of which there have been several over the past century, people were willing to exchange their freedom (which you presumed so highly valued) for security supplied by government (food, housing, health care, physical protection, etc).

Government size grew accordingly--along with people's dependence on State apparatus.

The coups de gras was figuring out how to bypass your clever check of judicial review. Actually, the solution turned out to be pretty straightforward. The executive and legislative branches learned that they could simply pack the court with judges willing to interpret the law in an interested manner. This scheme assured that virtually any law could pass muster if submitted to judicial review.

The upshot of this effort has been that, over the past few decades, we've been able to massively increase the size and scope of government without passing a single relevant Constitutional amendment. And because interest pervades the courts, we hardly bother to scrutinize new laws judicially.

Instead of law, we largely count on political influence to maintain Progress. This has spawned the nation's most lucrative industry, lobbying, which moves $ trillions annually between traders of favor and influence.

We couple that with a democractic voting process that helps the largest special interest groups exert their influence first.

As you can see, we have no practical use for the Constitution today. We realize, of course, that you had our best interests at heart when you wrote it. But you appear to have underestimated two powerful forces of human nature working against your framework from the get go. One, each of us possesses virtually unlimited desires. Two, we prefer to satisfy those desires while expending the least amount of labor possible.

These natural forces, you see, made it irresistable for us to recruit government as the agent for achieving our desires in a parsimonious, get-something-for-nothing fashion. Unfortunately your Constitution does not facilitate this process, so we need to move on.

We would, however, entertain any proposals you might have for managing the country's debt, which in the last few years has become nearly unmanageable.

Best regards,

We The People