The end-product of all that is our Constitution, which conservatives in recent times try to twist into an "original intent" that, in history, was actually soundly defeated, within just the first two weeks of the U.S. Constitutional Convention.
This understanding is the backdrop for our Constitution's Sovereignty Clause, which is the most important clause in any constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There is no aristocracy here. There is (unlike in the prior Articles of Confederation) no sovereignty residing in any of the states. And, also being rejected here was this, which opened the closing paragraph of the Articles of Confederation, and which assigned there the ultimate sovereignty to a god, even above the states: "And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation ..." No god is anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. No god "authorized" it. The people, the ruled, did, and do.
The U.S. Constitution was a bigger break away from any prior constitution than any constitution in history, before or since, has been. It was truly a revolutionary, progressive, document. Anyone who considers it to be "conservative" has no knowledge of history, or else is lying, because it's the exact opposite of that: it's radically progressive. It's a truly revolutionary document.
Can it be improved? Of course: that's what the provisions for amending it are for. Unlike any religion's canonized Scripture, this Constitution is thus a living, not a dead, ultimate legal authority (dead, such as the Bible, the Quran, etc., any canonized Scripture, necessarily is). What makes it a living constitution is that it allows for its own amendment, by the people, by the ruled; it makes them constantly the ultimate rulers. Instead of theocratic, it abandons all theocracy. That's one of the many things that make it revolutionary.
It is the jewel of our democracy; and, so, it is being attacked, violated, besmirched, and misrepresented, by democracy's enemies. It is, in fact, our only protection, from the enemies of democracy.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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