The Constitution, the Founding & Federalism

   

What we’ve learned so far.

In Week 1, we focused on understanding the origins of race and racism in America. That understanding is important and relevant to this week’s topic – the founding of the American government. We will examine how white supremacy was directly incorporated into the fabric of our government in ways that are seldom discussed today when we look back fondly on America’s origins and celebrate Independence Day on July 4. In Week 2, we examined basic ideas about how and why governments are formed and the political culture that is reflected in the American government, as well as how the media covers stories about government and politics, and how we can be more effective consumers of political information that comes to us through the media.

Moving on to this week . . .

For Week 3, we turn our attention to the formation of one particular government at a particular point in time: The United States of America in 1787. Aside from the patriotic significance for Americans of this event in history (“Founding Fathers”, “birth of America”, etc.), it is also remarkable as a bold political experiment in how governments are formed. There was nothing certain about this new form of government in the North American continent lasting even a year, much less over 200 years. In fact, there was nothing certain about it even being adopted by the States that had been newly liberated from England. The only thing the representatives at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the hot, muggy summer of 1787 knew for sure was that the existing “loose” structure of cooperation among the States (Articles of Confederation) was not working well and needed to be fixed if the States had any chance of surviving past their victory in the War of Independence.

Forming a new government.

Guided by the reading from your textbook in chapters 2 and 3, we will examine the social, political and economic conflicts with which the Founders were confronted and the arduous but creative approaches they took to resolve those conflicts. They wrestled with the same political values we fight about today – democracy, liberty, equality and security. Their solutions have been cast by scholars as both brilliant and ill-fated. They would lay the foundation for the balance of power among the branches of the Federal government and the power sharing between the Federal and state governments (“federalism”) that have been copied by new democracies around the world. But their solutions would also violate the fundamental principles of human rights they had proclaimed only 11 years earlier in the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so lay the foundation for the greatest domestic disaster the country would ever face – a Civil War – that in the next century would threaten the survival of the American experiment itself.