The United States Constitutional Basis

While different forms of government have been around for thousands of years, the U. S. Constitution established a new approach to government. It was intended by the Founding Fathers that this new approach would enable the United States to avoid the historic problems of European governments. This intent appears to have been largely met over the past two centuries. Embedded in the new approach is the assumption that the people being governed are the true source of power. Government is supposed to be responsive to the people, and the people are supposed to be applying common sense in their best interest.

In previous forms of government, people and their common sense were suppressed. Due to men such as Thomas Paine, the United States was founded on and sustained by a continuing reliance on common sense. However, with the rapid changes in technology, we can lose a clear vision of what constitutes common sense.

The governmental framework is supposed to make sense. The U. S. Constitution as a system recognizes the limits of the federal government and the rights of the states, which have their own constitutional systems. Within each of the states are many counties, cities, and townships that are formally organized to provide more detailed local government, often modeled on the general approach taken in the U. S. Constitution.

Our vision of properly organized government does not get confused until we introduce politics. The U. S. Constitution establishes a systematic framework intended to constrain the relatively volatile political culture that accompanies representative and democratic forms of government. A political party process and a political culture, embodied primarily in the two dominant political parties, tie all of these governmental systems together. The following discussions focus on how the Constitution interfaces with politics.

The constitutional framework and the constitutional operating procedures prevent concentrations of governmental power. They are intended to reduce the opportunity for partisan special interest groups or individuals to gain disproportionate power through the political process, which could cause the government to degenerate into tyranny. The U. S. Constitution as a system was born at a time when governmental tyranny was a strong, underlying factor that was driving the colonists toward revolution. Thus, the key design objective of the U. S. Constitution involved power management.

The U. S. system of government is based on the concept of separation of powers. No one group or individual is supposed to control everything, minimizing the potential for political and governmental corruption. In school, we were taught the intended virtues of this constitutional system. One thing that we were not taught is that proper operation of the U. S. Constitution and government established therein requires no politics nor does it require political parties.

However, politics do exist and political parties seek to control the government to the extent allowed by the U. S. Constitution. This means that each political party would like to control all three branches of government and would like to be free to pursue the power related objectives of the party. Only one party (the in-power party) can achieve a significant level of control at a time, so the other political parties (the out-of-power parties) tend to consolidate their opposition. Since voting power depends on numbers, the result is that we have only two major parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Although each of these parties includes people with a spectrum of views, it seldom appears worthwhile to launch a third party initiative.

Unfortunately, our technical society enables off-the-level politics, making it easier to confuse and control the voters. Given human nature, it is a lot easier for unprincipled politicians to use technology to capture votes. Technidigm-2000 returns the technology advantage to the principled politicians, raising the standard to the original intent of the Founding Fathers -- that honorable people should govern the United States.

In order to raise a standard, one must know what the standard is and be able to recognize when it is being met. The standards and perspectives of the colonial and Founding Fathers emphasized the need for common sense in government. It was their objective to lay the foundation for a new type of government. It was their hope that we would be able to continue to build on that foundation in a manner that would sustain human rights, self determination, and freedom.

From our perspective, we ascribe significant respect to our constitutional forefathers for their wisdom in laying the foundation. However, we argue quite a bit about what their original intentions were. This debate most often occurs when someone wants to make a point in modern political debates, presuming that our highly revered predecessors would have known what to do in today's circumstances. We suppose that they are somehow conveying their all-knowing guidance to us through historic documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers. If things had not changed so much in the last two hundred years, our suppositions about their forward-looking sageness might be more valid.

While we muse over what the great revolutionary leaders would think about some of our current government problems, we will never really know. We refer to their documents when it serves our purposes. The Founding Fathers just established the basic framework, and they used it to solve their own problems. We are responsible for solving our problems. We have been provided with the necessary constitutional tools to find our own answers, but it will require a more complex process such as Technidigm-2000 to be successful in our age of technology.

Student Questions:

1. Tally the points made in the above level one discussion, assigning each paragraph or sentence to a specific element of Technidigm-2000's 12 elements.

2. Select one of the 12 elements impacted the most in question 1 and collect level 2 facts from any available school reference materials, experienced people whom you know, or by looking information up in the local library.

3. Describe an issue related to the Constitution and the intentions of the Founding Fathers, an issue that requires research to collect or develop additional information. Explain how you would approach this level three research or how an experienced researcher might do so.

4. Pick a difficult constitutional issue that might be decided upon by the Supreme Court. If we consider the Supreme Court Judges to represent level four experts on the Constitution, what personal experience or other characteristics would be appropriate for them to have that would make them "good judges" regarding the selected issue?

5. How is your selected issue impacted today by off-the-level politics? Is there likely to be improvement in the near future?

6. How does the selected issue relate to government officials and how they do their jobs? Is there likely to be compromise relative to the interests of the people due to the political power of various appointed officials?

7. If you could predict the future, how do you think this issue might change over the next 100 years? Next 1,000 years?

8. How much of this change is already allowed by the Constitution? Would an amendment be appropriate to facilitate what you believe would be the "will of the people"?

9. Based on your Technidigm-2000 analysis, how should this issue be treated by political leaders in this and in other countries?

10 What similar topics are there that would also fit well in your answers to these questions?