Next week will mark 243 years from July 4, 1776 when the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence that marks the birth of America as an independent state. But it was thirteen years later, in 1789, the Constitution took effect. Americans will celebrate the day with picnics, barbecues, local parades and fireworks. But the reality is that although the Fourth of July is when the thirteen colonies formally broke away from the British Crown, it is the Constitution that rules and affects our everyday lives.
Recent political developments, not only those related to Trump’s election and administration, have raised voices of discontent as to how well the two plus-centuries constitution serves the political needs of the country.
Gerrymandering of congressional districts, the circumvention of the popular vote by the electoral college, election rules and procedures left to the states, the over-presentation of states with low populations in the Senate and the Electoral College, and the politicization of the Supreme Court made up of jurists appointed for life are at the center of the discontent. Although all Americans are impacted by the effects of these realities, it is mostly Democrats who see themselves as the main losers. But under other circumstances, it could be Republicans.
Add to all that that the Constitution is not always clear or explicit on the boundaries of presidential powers, something that becomes vivid in the case of occupants of the White House willing to push executive power beyond its traditional limits.
But, are the Framers of the Constitution truly responsible? How could they have predicted the way the country and the individual states would develop in terms of distribution of population and the demographic profile of states over the ensuing centuries? Their concern was to establish a democratic governance system based on checks and balances. Fueled by the fervor and enthusiasm of founding a new independent state, they assumed that future generations would also value and protect the institutions that guaranty democratic governance. Accused of the possibility the Constitution left room for chicanery and shenanigans for political gain, they would retort by saying “We gave you a country and the best government system of our time. Protect its essential mission and make it work for the common good.” In today’s political parlance, they would have said that when it comes to the quality of democracy in America, “It’s the people, stupid!”
I have left for last the biggest and most sensitive issue the Constitution did not resolve. It is America’s original sin, that is, the unwillingness of some and the inability of others among the Framers of the Constitution to abolish slavery and give all colonial Americans, black and white, equal political rights. Despite a Civil War and the Civil Rights Act a century later, we still live with the legacy and consequences of that original sin. Covert or overt racism still exists and its more or less ugly expressions are a stain on all of us.
Again, it would be easy to blame this on the Founding Fathers. In some colleges, including Hofstra University where I taught, students demand that statues of slave holder Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson, be removed. With the wisdom and sentiments of our time two centuries later we can and do condemn their failure in that regard. But to ignore that we are all products of our time fails to do justice to them as well. They lived in a world in which, as hideous and inhumane slavery is, many practiced and profited from slavery. Those times, religious establishments, Christian and Muslim, accepted it or did not officially denounced it. Enslaving humans on racial or non-racial grounds, has regrettably existed for millennia. We find it in the Greek and Roman times and in the Bible. At its founding, Christianity made all people, including slaves, equal before God but also preached that slaves should obey their masters.
Let’s remember that many years from now, we are going to be judged by history in regards to whether we protected the planet and its endangered species; how we kept treating women and children; how we fed and clothed the poor; and how we nursed the sick among us. Our only defense will be the same we should accord those flawed, quarreling, and sometimes mean-spirited Americans – understanding and forbearance. They gave the people a guiding document. It was not perfect, nor was it much for its enslaved citizens. But it was a beginning.
Now let’s do our part.
Let's Reason 
Excellent and thoughtful. “Our part” and challenge, is to throw out the bad, without destroying the good as we do so.
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