Title: Constitution Day Notes
Original CoS Document (slug): constitution-day-notes
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Attached File: Consititution_Day_Notes_and_Discussion.pdf
Created: 2022-06-20 17:27:49
Updated: 2023-06-20 23:00:00
Published: 2022-06-20 01:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T20:04:30.559830932
Constitution Day Notes and Discussion
What is the difference between a confederation and a nation?
Describe the process of the Constitutional Convention.
In what ways is the Constitution a reaction to what has come before them in historic
and current governments?
List the many issues that had to be addressed by the convention.
What are the essential liberties of people, and what do those mean?
What can government do and what are its limits of power?
The Senate was established as an elite group with the House a democratic body. Is the
same true today?
Delving Deeper
Madison deceived some states into attending the convention thinking that they were to
revise the Articles of Confederation when he truly planned to write a new constitution.
Do the ends justify the means? (To see his rationalization, read Federalist Paper 40)
Edmund Randolph stated that the character of a government is to secure:
1. Against foreign invasion,
2. Against dissension between members of the Union or seditions in particular states,
3. Procure to the states various blessings of which an isolated situation was
incapable,
4. Be able to defend itself against encroachment by states,
5. Be paramount to (or supersede) state constitutions.
Do you agree with these? Should government be limited to these?
Compare and contrast Randolph’s characteristics with the preamble of the Constitution
which sets out the functions of government:
1. Establish justice,
2. Insure domestic tranquility,
3. Provide for the common defense,
4. Promote the general welfare,
5. Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity.
The term “mutual and general welfare” is very broadly interpreted and utilized today.
What should it comprise? What should be its limits?
Benjamin Franklin wrote, But the Constitution only guarantees the American people the
right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
What constitutes a right to pursue happiness?
Madison wrote: A government without a proper executive and judiciary would be the
mere trunk of a body, without arms or legs to act or move. What does he mean? How is
this so?
What would be the consequences of individual states:
1. Providing their own armies
2. Setting treaties or entering into alliances
3. Regulating foreign and domestic commerce (imports and exports)
4. Setting taxes
5. Coining money
6. Deciding citizenship
7. Awarding patents and copyrights
8. Admitting new state
Madison: Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union,
none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control
the violence of faction . . . Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate
and virtuous citizens, equally friends of public and private faith, and of public and
personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is
disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided not
according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party but by the superior
force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Do you believe this is true? How did the Constitution hope to address this problem?
How well has it succeeded?
Madison was an idealist. Where do you see us not meeting his goals today? What can
be done now to end corruption of political leaders?
What are the pros and cons of Madison’s statement that:
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one by removing its
causes; the other, by controlling its effects. There are two methods of removing the
causes of factions: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence;
the other by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same
interests.
The forming of our nation and development of the Constitution was initiated and
promoted by a relatively few determined individuals. What are similar movements
which have been started by a few and have been life-altering?