When I ask the question “Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?”, I am asking if the design of our government is missing something important for it to operate as the Founding Fathers intended. Did they overlook something?
In one of the radio interviews I have done recently, the assertion was made that my assigning responsibility to “We the People” for the actions necessary to fix our government was perhaps a bit “idealistic or naïve.” If that is true I am in good company because our Founding Fathers specifically designed our government to rest on the people for its authority.
Alexander Hamilton wrote, in Federalist No. 22, discussing the inadequacy of the central government under the Articles of Confederation and the need for the new Constitution, “The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.”
The Articles of Confederation established a relationship between thirteen States with each retaining its sovereignty. The States essentially agreed to play nice in the same sandbox with the other States, but there were no real penalties for not playing nice so pretty much all of the States played according to their own rules and eleven years on the whole system was breaking down.
With that as the backdrop, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution beginning with the preamble, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.”
The Founding Fathers, with purpose, instituted our National government squarely on the shoulders of the citizens of these United States of America. They held that the governed must allow themselves to be governed if the Government is to stand.
If there is a fundamental flaw in our government, it would have to be “We the People” who are incapable of meeting our responsibility as our Founding Fathers designed it. I reject that notion in the strongest terms!
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