Urgent Need for a new Constitutional Convention

 Dear Editor,

Michael McKenna’s praises of the Constitution’s preamble (Washington Time’s special series “To the Republic: Rediscovering the Constitution” 8-31-22) failed to mention that the accumulation of thousands of laws passed using it - has failed to achieve most of the preamble’s seven intentions.  

The Constitution was justly amended to “form a more perfect union” after our civil war had killed more Americans than all the wars we have fought in since then, combined.  Abolishing slavery and giving women a vote was major.  But not nearly enough.  Most of the preamble’s other six intended goals barely deserve a passing grade.   Most importantly, our nation’s laws have repeatedly failed to “establish Justice”.  We have a legal system where it is better to be guilty and rich than innocent and poor.  Our cherished liberties cannot be sustained without ensuring “liberty and justice for all”.  Abraham Lincoln clearly understood this when he wrote that the Constitution is only a  “Frame of Silver” around our “Apple of Gold”, the Declaration of Independence. 

“We the People of the United States” urgently need a Constitutional Convention that some conservatives are now calling for.   Without a major transformation of our current laws focusing primarily on “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” we will continue to see our freedoms and our security diminished. 

Thomas Paine in his pamphlet “Common Sense” summarized that the only legitimate purpose of any government was to maximize mankind’s “freedom and security”.   Political parties cannot do this unless they agree.

In 1789 Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison “Every constitution...and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”   He believed that  “the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead”.

This is a truly patriotic and self-evident principle that both political parties have ignored for decades.  The survival of our union depends on swearing an oath to protect the fundamental principles within the Declaration of Independence - and keeping it.  Our Constitutional frame of silver cannot achieve this as it is.