The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [89]
6. The most important idea embodied in the US Constitution is: the individual is greater than the state. The original idea of the ancient Greeks found a new home in the Constitution of the United States of America.
The Continental Congress used the Articles of Confederation [97] until it proved a poor authority for governing the colonies. The entire American Revolution threw off the yoke of a too-powerful central government, therefore, the Articles of Confederation kept the central government’s power minimal. Nonetheless, the power was so slight the colonies failed to function together as a team. For example, they had no central money supply or common roads, and some colonies were trying to impose import duties on other colonies. The net result was chaos.
In 1787, a Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia to write a new document for operating the new nation. The gathering, as authorized by the various legislatures, was for the sole purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation; however, the delegates threw out the Articles of Confederation at once and began working on an entirely new instrument for governance. In this respect, their actions went far beyond their authority. George Washington agreed to head the convention, and through the summer the delegates from the various colonies worked out the details of the document in secret. The framers of the Constitution decided they must find ways to limit the powers of the central government while giving it enough authority to unify the nation. To accomplish this they set forth each power of the president and each house of Congress separately.[98] In this way, they formed a federal government where the states retained the powers not specifically given to the federal entity (they thought). It was a new way of thinking, in that it established a representative government on two levels—one local (the state) and the other general (the federal or central). Another vital difference had to be resolved. Rural states wanted representation by state, but the more populous states wanted representation by population. The great compromise allowing the Constitution to be adopted was the creation of two houses of Congress, one established by population which the populous states would undoubtedly control (the House of Representatives), and another established by geographic area wherein two representatives from each state would serve (the Senate) and the rural states would probably control. There were other mighty problems such as slavery, but each one was solved by some sort of compromise that left everyone quite unhappy. But that is the nature of true compromise.
By these improvisations and compromises the Constitution of the United States evolved into a final document. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were exhausted, but one last task remained—selling the document to the nation.
Many people not at the convention wanted more protection from a powerful central government, so Ten Amendments were added to the document guaranteeing a set of individual rights to the people themselves and further restricting government action. Without the promise of these amendments the Constitution might have failed adoption by the states. Each of these amendments guarantees the individual rights that the government cannot interfere with, such as freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, freedom to petition the government, security of homes from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom to own guns, freedom from unlawful arrest or multiple prosecutions, the right to a jury trial in criminal cases and civil lawsuits, the right to remain silent if charged with a crime, right to a lawyer in a criminal case, and the right to a reasonable bail among many others. Perhaps the ultimate expression of the individual being greater than the state was the Second Amendment which gave citizens the right to own firearms. In dictatorial states firearm ownership is absolutely forbidden. These Ten Amendments are collectively referred to as the Bill of Rights.
The Tenth Amendment is often