Only two countries in the modern world have a founding document older than the U.S. Constitution. The oldest is England, if you count the Magna Carta of 1215, and secondly the tiny republic of San Marino (1600), nestled snugly within the Italian peninsula.  Other countries such as the Dominican Republic have had 32 constitutions altogether, and a number of other countries from Ecuador to Thailand have had 20 or more constitutions.  Israel, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia are several of the few countries that do not have constitutions.

The first three articles of the Constitution of the United States set up the three major institutions or branches of government.  Additional articles deal with interstate relations (IV); amending the Constitution (V); establishing the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land (VI) and ratification of the Constitution (VII.) Then, there is the Bill of Rights and the seventeen remaining amendments.

The U.S. Constitution has been a model for other countries as well. For example, Australia. The High Court of Australia in D’Emden v Pedder (1904) cited the U.S. Constitution as precedent to the law “down under” by noting a challenge of federal law in this country in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) because of similarities between the two national, federal systems.

Our Constitution has served our country well for more than two and one quarter centuries.  During that time, many countries have fallen through the failure of their institutions and many more have emerged.  In one fundamental way, the U.S. Constitution has withstood the test of time, including a Civil War and an evolution in society that would amaze and astound our founding fathers.

INSTITUTIONS IN OUR SOCIETY

There are many institutions in the U.S. besides those of our national government. There is the military, the churches, synagogues and mosques, police, marriage, and civic organizations such as Rotary International and the Chambers of Commerce. Scouting is an institution as well. Many of these institutions exist in other countries as well (there are 174 countries with scouting, alone, and 200 countries or territories with Rotary chapters.) There is also a common thread that runs through these different activities and organizations. Within a short period of time, I attended a Rotary International meeting and a meeting where a young man was being recognized as a Eagle Scout. In both cases, someone opened the meeting with a pledge to the American flag, and then a brief invocation by a clergy member or a laymen followed. A speaker came next who mentioned how fortunate we are to live in a free country, and doubtlessly if these meetings had occurred this month or next, there would be some mention of the upcoming general election with a reminder to attendees to vote. No church should be preaching sedition and telling their congregants to take up arms. No scout leader should be teaching their cubs to hate people of other races. The Knights of Columbus or the Masons should not be plotting to overthrow our democracy. These disparate groups all play affirmative roles in our society. Change, when needed, should come about peacefully. But each of these institutions have their own challenges today, so for the sake of simplicity, I want to focus on the institutions of the federal government.

TRUST IN OUR INSTITUTIONS HAS BEEN ERODED

According to the Pew Research Center, a polling organization with an impeccable reputation, American trust in U.S. government has fallen over the past sixty-six years from a high of 77% in 1964 to a low of 17% in 2019.  Predictably, Republicans are the most trusting of federal government when a Republican president in in the White House and Democrats more trusting when the reverse is true.  However, when one looks at the last half century as a whole, Democrats are much less suspicious of the motives and policy decisions that Washington promotes than Republicans.  Pew sums it up by noting:

Today, 35% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they trust the federal government just about always or most of the time, compared with 11% of Republicans and Republican leaners.^[1]” (Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024, June 24, 2024.) 

TRUST IN OUR INSTITUTIONS HAS BEEN UNDERMINED

The Pew data clearly notes that there are downward trends in the trust line during the Vietnam War and Watergate, and other periods of controversy.  However, the period of 2016-2020 during which Donald J. Trump was president was the lowest period in overall, bipartisan trust during the last twelve presidents.

There is another reason that trust in our institutions has steadily fallen over the past half century.  This is due to the effects of talk radio hosts, and the rise of cable news channels and internet-based podcasts. I could see it already in 1990.  Some evangelicals back then were referring to themselves as “Ditto-heads” rather than Christians.  Others bought into conspiracies after seeing low budget, politically-slanted films like the “Clinton Chronicles.”  There was a prolonged attack on the institutions of government during the period of 1992-2000 and then again from 2008-2016 as militia groups rose up following armed incidents at Ruby Ridge, Waco and the OKC bombing.  The turbulent times of the Tea Party emerged as the first black American president moved into the White House.  Government agents from the Bureau of Land Management working in the West managing our government resources came under attack from people who believed they had rights to public lands that the public, themselves, did not have.

The traditional media (pejoratively called the “mainstream media” and sometimes referred to as the Fourth Estate) came under attack because of their fact-based, and occasionally balanced reporting. The New York TImes (est. 1851) with their 132 Pulitzer Prizes; The Washington Post (est. 1877) with 76 Pulitzer Prizes; The LA Times (est. 1881) with 41 Pulitzers; The Wall Street Journal (est. 1889) with 39 Pulitizer Prizes and The Chicago Tribune (est. 1847) with 28 Pulitzers to name just a few were beaten down and marginalized by overnight “news” outlets such as Fox News, The War Room, One American News Network, Newsmax, and others with barely a century of reporting between them all, and no Pulitzer recognition for outstanding journalism, arts and letters.

DIVIDED GOVERNMENT

We have in our Constitution the possibility, even the liklihood of divided government (gridlock to some.) This is not necessarily a bad thing. There was a Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville who visited America around the time of 1828 or so. He wanted to see if what he was hearing about America was accurate, or just “too good to be true.” He spent several years here visiting and interviewing everone from wealthy planters to slaves, to native Americans, to ordinary Americans. When he returned to France, he wrote and published a book called “Democracy in America.” In this book, he warned about the possibility of tyranny in the future. This tyranny, he warned, would emerge from the people, themselves, who he believed could not warmly or willingly accept the diversity we have in our country today as per 42 U.S.C. Recent threats against the Haitians of Springfield, OH who are in this country under the auspices of the U.S. government are a case in point. Here is what de Tocqueville wrote:

In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. When an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys its injunctions; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and remains a passive tool in its hands; the public troops consist of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain States even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the evil of which you complain may be, you must submit to it as well as you can.”

This is precisely why we need balanced government, a healthy two-party system with its warts and all. A landslide win (including both houses of Congress) by either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would make it difficult for anyone to oppose their policies, if not for the courts.

AND SPEAKING OF THE COURTS

The architrave over the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington says “Equal Justice Under Law.”  This was part of the vision laid down by our Framers two hundred and thirty-seven years ago.  But today, there are people on both the political left and right who are intent on tearing this vision to shreds.  On the left, we have people who are unhappy with recent Supreme Court decisions, such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which overturned Roe, and the protection of abortion under the U.S. Constitution. Or, perhaps Trump v. U.S., a decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the President “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution” from any action within his “core constitutional powers.”  While many women in America thought Dobbs was a terrible decision, I saw Trump as the worse of the two, especially given the Court’s aphorism “Equal Justice Under Law” which now seems in doubt, at least in the case of this one man who sees himself as accountable to no one.

Yet, cases we disagree on do not make a court corrupt.  With the possible exception of one conservative associate justice, the high court is not corrupt, though another conservative associate justice seems to be conflicted.  I do believe that Chief Justice John Roberts owes it to the American People and the legacy of the Court to develop a code of ethics with a means of censoring a justice who ignores these ethics.  Other than that, the Court is just much more conservative than I am. I know that eventually the pendulum will swing another way, so I oppose “tinkering” with the Court just because I do not agree with every ruling.

ARE OUR INSTITUTIONS BEING POLITICIZED?

The answer to this is “Yes” and “No.” The was a ring of truth in Patrick Buchanan’s “Culture War” speech to the GOP convention in 1992, though you have to patiently parse it out to find it.

There are numerous “firefights” at the moment (any given moment.) On the one hand, progressives in our society are trying to implement fundamental changes to many of our institutions, some good and long needed, and perhaps others counter-intuitive, or at least controversial to the extreme. Just one example: one initiative which I have studied has to do with giving residents in this country who are not citizens a limited vote as the ballot applies to local elections only. I understand the reasoning to this, but I do not agree with it, because undocumented migrants, illegal aliens (call them what you will) have no stake in our society. Voting is a benefit of citizenship. Who would suggest that the Vatican allow Protestants a vote on who runs the Curia?

Currently, Republicans are saying that the Department of Justice has been politicized by the Democrats and that it is for this reason, and not the alleged crimes (which have been true billed) or criminal acts (where conviction has followed) that have led to Donald Trump’s legal woes. However, there is no direct evidence, and hardly a valid scrap of circumstantial evidence, to suggest this.

Our institutions, today, are being co-opted, however, just for doing their job. Take the assault on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.) The CDC has had a stellar reputation since it was launched in 1946, and it is the envy of much of the world. However, as a science-based program, it has come under attack by groups in our society who are against vaccinations for children for whatever reason, logical or otherwise, or because the CDC tabulates deaths to children from gun violence, which has not escaped the notice of gun advocates in Congress. Efforts to politicize the CDC during the midst of the late pandemic to endorse some of the Administration’s wackier policies, or the need for vaccines to combat COVID, (what some in the Administration jokingly referred to as the “Kung Flu”) almost forced the director to resign or be dismissed.

Major worthwhile bureaucracies in the Executive Branch, such as the Departments of Education, Energy and Environmental Protection are on the chopping block and face closure depending on which party comes to power in January. If you believe the notion that our environment is not, in fact, threatened by climate change, or pollution, or over-development (after all, the Grand Tetons are still standing), then you may very well agree to disband it. If you think of our wetlands as “swamps,” and our forests as “jungles,” then it might make sense for you to put any thought of protecting our natural heritage to bed once and for all.

If you think Fed Ex, UPS or DHL can deliver the mail (even to dozens of small, rural towns in Alaska) on a daily basis, then why not shutter the Post Office? Where does it end?

THE NEED FOR VISION

Proverbs 29: 18 of the Bible says: “Where there is no vision, the people perish. . .”  The word for vision is chazon, which refers to prophetic vision, not the sort of vision statements many of us have had to craft for the organization we worked for.  I am aware of no genuine, prophetic utterances concerning America.  But fortunately, Cambridge^[2] offers a bid of leeway in the translation, namely:

The vision is the actual contact between God and the human spirit, which is the necessary condition of any direct revelation; the law is the recorded result of such a revelation, either passed from mouth to mouth by tradition or written permanently in a book.”

This is probably a statement that everyone of faith can agree on. But what of people who have no faith? Is it moral, ethical or legal to force our views of God on them? Should we punish youngsters in public school for not praying along with their (Baptist/Buddhist/Scientology/Satanist/Methodist/Mormon/Muslim/Jewish) teacher? Is a politician unfit to lead a legislature in a Christian nation if they are Jewish? The Nazis said “No!” What do you say?

AFTERWORD

I don’t think our institutions have failed us as much as we have failed our institutions. Many lay people and amateur historians have reinvented our Framers (those people who wrote the Constitution) in unauthentic ways. In order to be true to their vision (assuming their vision is superior to our and assuming they had a common vision), we need to personally find out more about them from reputable sources. And if you happen to believe that Mssrs, Hamilton, Franklin, Morris, Sherman, Madison, et. al knew better than we, then women would not have the vote and slavery might still be legal today. Nor did they have a common vision for America. But that does not mean that it is impossible to find a consensus, which is exactly what we should be doing before it is too late.

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^[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024/

^[2] The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.  J. J. Steward, editor. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1904. As found in the e-Sword Bible study software program. *This resource is in the public domain.*