The Constitution's Amazing Longevity

When the Constitution was being crafted in secrecy with shuttered windows and closed doors, allowing the men convened to openly converse their bloodless coup of the current American government, the delegates were seemingly of too many viewpoints to ever reach agreement and succeed in their mission.

Whether it be large states versus their small counterparts arguing over proportional representation, or slave holding delegates pushing to provide their "peculiar institution" with legal protection, or Hamilton arguing for near monarchy to rule America - compromise seemed rather impossible and the convention's fate, doomed.

However, the perseverance of federalists to obtain a new national government, and the influence of men who believed change was needed, but safeguarded the liberties of their states and people jealously, resulted in an Constitution that although was far from Madison's original version was a masterpiece in checks and balances and limited government.

And we know this Constitution was a success by the simple fact it has stood two hundred and twenty years, through forty-three different Presidents and numerous wars - including a bloody civil war that reaped six-to-seven hundred thousand young souls from their prime over the questions of slavery and secession - and still thrives today.

But few of the delegates expected the document to last long, as many expected their constitution to maintain Republican values for their generation and would ultimately be replaced by the next, and so on and so forth. It is a opinion that Thomas Jefferson expressed often that one generation had no right to shackle the next in what they believed to be proper governance and he would undoubtedly be shocked by its near originality so many generations removed from the convention.

Yes, there have been amendments to alter and advance the nation's constitution, but by and large it remains the same functioning framework as two hundred and twenty years ago, and against the current of most legal structures concerning national governance, has only strengthened the bond of the nation with its unexpected longevity and overwhelming support from a populace of almost annoyingly varied ideology and interest.

So, although random... I wish our representatives today, from both parties, would stop and consider what it took for the assembled delegates, owing allegiance to twelve different and rather diverse colonies, to form a government of the people, by the people and for the people that has survived longer than most monarchs or empires, and how we can use that eighteenth statecraft today to resolve our, in comparison, meager political issues.

What say you?