In all fairness, I’d have to say that the Constitution, though good for its day, is now seriously flawed.

My last post was about how America is racist, and that’s not good enough. I concluded that we should find some metrics for measuring it, then set some goals and achieve them instead of committing the sin of pride and just asserting that America is great.

The Constitution was flawed

Similarly for our political system. Elsewhere I’ve written that our Constitution is seriously flawed. And pointed to some flaws present when the country was founded. When it was first ratified:

• There were no protections for citizens rights.
• America’s disdain of corporations was not recorded
• No system was designed to handle political parties.
• No system was set up to handle running for office

The first one was rectified in the first amendment. That was good, but it points to the fallibility of the founders. What else did they omit?

The second was forgotten. America hated the British East India Company. So each state imposed very strict constraints on corporations. So the founders didn’t think to put anything in the Constitution about it. Over the years, people forgot how important it was. And after the civil war, one greedy group of people asked for just one little change…

The third was a problem beginning very early. George Washington complained about political parties. But no system was ever designed to remedy the problems. Pretty soon, they just assumed parties were a necessary, uncontrollable phenomenon.

The fourth wasn’t a problem in the beginning, but it is now. We ask the Supreme Court to decide whether money is speech and whether corporations are people. These might not have been an issue in the 1700’s. But they are today. Elections are a free-for-all with few rules. Today these omissions in the Constitution are serious defects.

No system for political accountability

Another flaw was that it set up no system for accountability, except for elections. But party politics have been ruining our elections for a long time and those problems have gotten worse. There have been many party bosses and other kinds of corruption. And they unfairly prevent third parties from having a chance. Today, elections barely work. For Congress, they’re mostly a rubber stamp for incumbents.

We need a system, a process, of assuring government is both representative and accountable to the people.

The Constitution was great for its time, and set a good example. But when measured against what the people want, America no longer even seems like a democracy. It’s time we admit the flaws and address them.

Let’s make America great

In the previous post, on racism, I said if America wants to not be racist, we should stop asserting we’re not and instead create ways to measure it. Then we should set some goals and achieve them.

The whole goal of PeopleCount.org is to rejuvenate democracy, so it’s representative and accountable to the people. In the next post, we’ll look to see how we might measure these, to know when we’re successful.