Is the Constitution Sacred, or Is It Trash?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the Constitution of the United States. Elie Mystal, a recent guest on “The View,” was promoting his new book titled “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.” He argued that the U.S. Constitution is “trash” because only white men were involved in writing it. Randy DeSoto gave the following reasons for why the Constitution is sacred and not trash. 

·         The U.S. “Constitution has been in operation since 1789, making it the world’s longest-surviving written charter of government.”

·         The “Northern states began outlawing the institution [of slavery] during and in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War.

·         All Northern states “had passed legislation ending slavery” by 1804. Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, “over 50 years after the American colonies declared their independence.”

·         In “1787, the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance … barring the introduction of slavery into the territory that would become the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.” Remember, the Constitution was drafted in the same city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.

·         “The Constitution specifically authorized the federal government to ban the importation of slaves in 1808 (approximately 20 years from the date the document was ratified).” In fact, Congress “passed the legislation in 1807 because the lawmakers wanted the ban to take effect at the soonest possible date, Jan. 1, 1808. President Jefferson signed the bill into law.”

·         The “Constitution contained a compromise that the Founders had reached, counting three-fifths of the state’s slave population when calculating the overall population for determining how many representatives a state would have in Congress.” As you might remember from your history lessons, the “Southern states wanted to count their entire slave populations” to have as many representatives in Congress as possible, but “the Northern states were not willing to allow it.” The result was fewer “votes [for] slave-holding interests in the House of Representatives.”

·         “Both of these constitutional provisions were a recognition that slavery was a present evil, not something many of the Founders wanted to see continue in perpetuity.”

·         Slavery existed in the world for thousands of years before slaves were brought to the American colonies, and it still exists in many parts of the world. However, “it was in the United States where the abolition movement took hold and bore legislative fruit in the Constitution and the laws of the Northern states.”

·         “Abolitionist and former slave [Frederick] Douglass argued convincingly that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document….”

·         “President [Abraham] Lincoln and the North would oversee the demise of slavery on all American soil during the Civil War in the 1860s.”

·         “The Republican-controlled Congress then passed the three post-Civil War amendments outlawing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection under the law and securing the right to vote for African-Americans.”

All of the above historical information should be taught in schools from kindergarten through university. If it were taught, people like Mystal could not make money by proclaiming that the Constitution is trash. The Constitution has guided the United States of America for more than 230 years and has stood the test of time, something that “trash” could never do. However, I Ben Shapiro said it best in his response to Mystal: “When he writes a document that ends up founding the most powerful and tolerant nation in world history, I will take this buffoon more seriously.”