Yesterday I tweeted about calling a new constitutional convention to begin the process of rebuilding America when this administration ends. The way I see it, it would be a multi-year process encouraging great debates from our best minds from every walk of life...
Historians, political scientists, activists, economists, conservatives and liberals, artists and writers, philosophers and lawyers. Religious and irreligious. A project designed to dig into the foundation of who we are and to re-examine it from the broad perspective of history
With an eye towards recommitting ourselves to our foundation values: that all people are equated equal, deserve due process under the law, and are born with unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If we start with that basic premise, a premise which has never been fully realized in the original Constitution and then we build out what that means for people today, people from every background, then we could have good faith arguments about who we want to be as a nation.
I think it would be cool if the new Constitutional Convention travels across the country, meeting in different cities over the duration of its tenure, if it becomes an American celebration, a high-minded civic exercise designed to create a new national mission statement.
Maybe the exercise does not end up amending the Constitution but instead serves create a broad national dialogue about the merits and flaws of our founding document. Maybe a few amendments get proposed. Or, my dream would be that the entire documents gets revised...
With an emphasis on equality and equity. Let's shuffle the Bill of Rights. Do we really need a 3rd Amendment about quartering soldiers? Can we finally do away with the 3/5 clause? Clean up the confusing language in the 2nd Amendment:
Get rid of the 18th and 21st Amendments? Get rid of the Electoral College? Dig into and define the Emoluments Clause? Imagine a new Constitution drafted by the best modern writers we have which preserves the best of who we are and gets rid of the worst?
All of it designed to repair our foundational flaws. To reinvent ourselves as the America we always wanted to be. It probably sounds radical, but look around at where we are now and ask yourself if the path we're on is sustainable. We're broken but we can fix it together.
