It was heartening to read this past week that the Iraqi people had voted in favor of their new constitution. After all, without a constitution, how can a country have clear-cut, definitive positions on important issues such as the right to bear arms?
But as delighted as I was with the news out of Iraq, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself and my fellow Americans. I mean, if we’re the cradle of modern democracy, how come we’re never asked to vote on our Constitution? It simply isn’t fair.
Sometimes it seems as if there’s not a first Tuesday of November that goes by without the board of elections boring us with 50 pages of candidates for circuit court judge to vote yea or nay on according to how pleasing their names sound. But never once has our government thrown us a bone with a spicy “So, do you want to keep the Constitution?” ballot question.
Look, I love our Constitution dearly and have even been pricing out the cost of a full body tattoo of its text (the amendment repealing Prohibition will go squarely over my liver). In other words, I certainly would vote in favor of the Constitution. It just would be nice to be asked, that’s all.
Now, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “C’mon, dude, people already did vote on the Constitution. Ever hear of a little thing called the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to which 74 delegates were invited, 55 attended, including Charles Cotesworth, Gunning Bedford Jr. and Oliver Elsworth?”
Well, I also know what I’m saying. I’m saying, “No, you c’mon, dude. The Constitutional Convention wasn’t quite the same thing as ‘democracy in action’ in which We The People go to the polls and then computer voting machines spew out whatever results the owners of the machines desire. Also, Ellsworth has two ‘l’s.'”
Our leaders and pundits and precocious fifth-graders tend to speak of the Constitution in overly reverential tones, as if it were written and handed down to us by God. But it was written by mortal, imperfect human beings who rarely bathed.
The Constitution is supposedly a ‘living, breathing document,’ yet we’ve been suffocating the poor thing under protective glass at the National Archives for decades.
The last amendment came 13 years ago, and that just concerned how senators and congressmen are to go about awarding themselves pay raises. There’s a reason why half the homeless people you see on the streets are out-of-work constitutional scholars. At least for their sake, it’s time to shake things up, Constitution-style!
So, how about it? In 2006, along with the midterm congressional elections, let’s also put the Constitution up for a vote. If you scoff and say, “That’s silly. We have the best Constitution in the world, based upon my having read no other constitutions,” well, then what’s the worry? We’ll all vote in favor of it, receive our ‘I voted!’ stickers and that will be that.
However, I don’t think that we should hold merely a referendum on the Constitution. That’d be awfully boring, and, plus, if more people vote no than yes, then we’d be up (a terrible word you can’t use in a newspaper) creek without a constitution.
So, that’s why the U.S. Constitution should be forced to run for the office of U.S. Constitution against other official documents that were (a) written in the United States and (b) have collected the requisite number of signatures to get on the ballot.
Maybe we’d wind up with the Constitution running against the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of Toastmasters International (www.toastmasters.org/pdfs/210.pdf), or the American Gerbil Society Code of Ethics (www.agsgerbils.org/ethics.html), or the Sports Fans of America Association Bill of Rights (www.sportsfansofamerica.com).
In any of those cases, the Constitution would most likely prevail, but I bet the debates would be fun: ‘First, U.S. Constitution, you say women can’t vote, then you say they can. Been hanging out with John Kerry lately? The American Gerbil Society has always believed women can own gerbils.’
However, don’t assume the Constitution can defeat all comers. What if, say, there is a document out there with wording that’s the exact opposite to the Constitution but is in a really fun font?
So, all I’m saying is: Let’s definitely vote on the Constitution in 2006 – so long as we’re all comfortable with the possibility of our country going down the drain.

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