Time for a New Constitution?

I have a friend named Bill who doesn’t have much education but who is a bit of a thinker nonetheless. This morning I ran into Bill, and he seemed pretty agitated. “What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Well, Professor,” Bill said, “the news this week has got me upset.  It seems that because the people don’t want cap-and-trade and Congress won’t pass it, the Obama Administration is just going to impose the program bureaucratically. And it seems that one guy in San Francisco– I forget his name, but he’s a judge who wasn’t elected and who nobody ever heard of before this week– gets to decide that the majority of voters in this state (and, I guess, in the nation, and in the whole history of civilization) are just plain irrational, so a law adopted by the People that this guy considers irrational suddenly becomes not a law anymore.

“Now tell me: does that make any sense at all? It seems to me that something isn’t working right. So we need to start thinking about adopting a new government– a new Constitution.”

“Well, I think you’re a bit overwrought,” I told Bill. “Still, I’m curious. Do you have any proposal  for this new Constitution?”

“I don’t have any fully worked out plan,” he admitted. “But I do have a few ideas. I understand that these may sound kind of nutty, especially to a professor like you. But here they are.

“One idea I’ve had is that it might be good to break down government into different jobs– different offices that perform different functions, you know. Sort of a division of labor. Like how orchestras have the director and the string section and the horn section, or how baseball teams have the pitcher and the catcher and the outfielders. It works best if people do their own jobs and let other people do theirs. In government, it seems to me that maybe there are three main kinds of jobs. You need some people who make the law, and other people who don’t make the law but instead just implement the law that the first group makes, and still other people who also don’t make the law but just impartially interpret and apply the law. It’s a bit rough, I know. But it might work.

“Another idea– and this goes along with the first one– is that we might agree on and write down what jobs we want these different parts of government to do. What powers we want them to have, you know. And then we could hold government to account– get after them if they start exercising powers we never gave them.

“I sort of think that, ultimately, power over government and what it does should rest with the people. I know, the people aren’t all that smart. They do dumb things. But then– no offense to you, Professor”– did I detect a hint of sarcasm in his voice?– “I’ve known smart people who do really dumb things. They think they’re so smart and they can’t see the obvious things the rest of us can see.  In the long run, I’m not sure the people aren’t smarter than the smart people. No offense.  But anyway, it seems more fair that way.

“One thing about giving power to the people,” Bill went on, “is that the law will reflect what the people believe, what values they have. And the government’s job won’t be to tell the people how they should live, but to help the people live the way of life that, together, they choose to live. I think we should have a ‘separation of church and state.’ That should be in the Constitution. But I don’t think that should mean that if the people’s ideas about the way of life they choose to live together are based on religious beliefs, the law can’t reflect that.

“So,” Bill asked. “What do you think?”

I tried to be gentle with Bill. So I told him that it was cute that he was thinking about these things– admirable, really. But all of his ideas had already been tried, I explained, and they didn’t work out very well. Probably he would be better off just accepting the system we have now. It might not make sense to him, given his lack of education, but smart people designed it, and smart people are running it, and a lot of smart people are pretty happy with it.