America's Biggest Strength is the Constitution, and Biggest Weakness Our Inability to Understand It

What is America's biggest strength and biggest weakness?

America’s biggest strength and biggest weakness lies within our relationship between our founding documents and us. The United States began, in many ways, as a great experiment. For the first time in the modern era, government would not be rooted in a monarch or a tyrant. Every single member of government would be a citizen leader, one who had no birthright to rule.

The genius of this document is, in fact, America’s greatest strength. In fewer than 4,500 words, the founders set up a framework by which policy can be written, debated, fine-tuned, and then ultimately adopted or cast aside. The powers of government were split between three branches, a revolution in and of itself, and each branch’s powers were specifically designated within the document. The Congress, itself bi-cameral, would be placed with the task of all legislative duties. The ability to activate troops by a declaration of war, the ability to print money and levy other taxes, the ability to create and implement regulations to prevent abuse by industry – these powers were all in the hands of the Congress. Why shouldn’t they be? Every single citizen had influence over three votes (their Representative, and Senators). If a representative did something wrong in policy making, backed the wrong measure, proposed a controversial piece of legislation, it was quickly corrected at the next election. If a senator did something, the states would replace them. Today, we have the ability replace them ourselves. In such a system, the country would not go to war carelessly, the country would not print its way to happiness, a nation would not spend what it did not have, and a nation would not tax the people more than they absolutely needed.

The president would be the first executive of the modern era that would not to have the abilities of a legislature. Our leader would be figurehead president. They would lead the military when battle was called by Congress or the nation was attacked, they would represent the will of the entire nation abroad, they would address the entire nation, either in Congress assembled or today over the air waves, to explain to them what the government has been doing. The president would be the first chief-executive that would not, and could not, become a tyrant.

We would also a have a judiciary that would be selected by the people through their representatives and not a single man or group of individuals on a committee, but by the force of the people through all of their elected representatives. It is only by this mean that the understanding of the law can be designed in a way to defend their God given rights – of which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were listed of great importance.

Our greatest weakness is that we have not educated ourselves on the richness of this document’s history and meaning which has allowed our politicians – both Democrat and Republican – to abuse it in their own private conquest of power. 

Our current debt crisis and “leadership crisis” is because Republicans and Democrats agreed to defile our governing document. They have allowed wars without declaration, entitlement spending without reforms or change, the taking of responsibility of state and local powers – where the people would have a great ability to hold leaders accountable – and placed that power in the hands of a few. They have distributed legislative powers to both the president and the Judiciary in giving up of the power to regulate to unelected, unaccountable, bureaucrats that cannot be replaceable by law until long terms have been served. They have set up boards of philosopher kings to control our economy. They have valued the short term project over long term stability in order to appease enough of the electorate to become the kings and queens that our grandparent and great grandparents either fought to overthrow or fled in order that they may not live under their corruption.

The solution to our problems, our problems being the reflection of our weakness, is to return to our Constitution. If we are to remove the “inefficiencies” the left hate and the “pork” the right hate – we have to return the power from the president back into the hands of the legislature. Of course, most legislatures, especially those that have been in Washington, D.C., for more than two terms, would not support this solution – they might have to be held accountable for their actions.

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