When Daniel Webster boasted that the “American Constitution is the great memorial of the deeds of our ancestors,” he made an understatement; America’s Constitution was not and is not merely a memorial to the brilliance of our Founders but to the greatest ideas of all western philosophy.
The Founding Fathers relied heavily on the wisdom of the past. They represented a conglomeration of philosophies and influences (Mosaic Law, Athenian democracy, Christian virtue, Magna Carta, John Locke, Montesquieu, Enlightenment thinking, etc.) all of which combined to produce a singular governing document that could not have come together at any other moment in history.
They also had personal experience. Their own run-ins with the crown had taught them just how easily a government could become tyrannical. Despite refined political philosophy and guarantees of rights, a government could still turn its back on its people–just as Great Britain had.
When assembling the American system of governance, the Founding Fathers knew they’d need not only to study great governments of the past but also why those governments had a fall from greatness. Creating a good government would be one thing; saving it from human nature would be another altogether.
|
|
