Thought for the Week

 

The United States Was Never Meant to Be One-Size-Fits-All

 Something American must not forget.

When America won its independence from Britain, we didn’t suddenly become one united country. The thirteen colonies became thirteen separate states, each with its own government, laws, and ideas about how things should work.

We had just broken away from a powerful central government; we sure didn't want to end up with another one.

To fight the war, we'd created a loose agreement called the Articles of Confederation. It was kind of like a group of roommates who agree to clean the house together but keep all their stuff separate.

Now, because of that bad experience with the British government, under the Articles of Confederation, the national government was very weak. It didn't have the authority to collect taxes, raise an army, or even settle arguments between states. All it could do was ask the states to behave and hope they agreed.

It mostly worked during the war. But after, things got really messy. The states started fighting with each other, the economy was a mess, and nothing was getting done. The states' leaders knew they needed to do something to fix it.

So in 1787, delegates from all the states met in Philadelphia. Rather than patching up the Articles of Confederation, they created a whole new plan: the U.S. Constitution.

Now here’s something we can't forget: they didn’t all agree. Sheesh. They weren't even close to agreeing about so many issues, like big states vs. small states, slave states vs. free states, strong central government vs. power to the states.

They argued a lot. It would have been easy to walk away, but they didn't. They negotiated, debated, and compromised (on almost everything).

SO. MUCH. COMPROMISE.

In the end, they created a system that everyone could live with. It wasn't perfect. Otherwise, they wouldn't have almost immediately proposed the Bill of Rights. (James Madison introduced 19, Congress approved 12 to send to the states, and by 1791, 10 of those were ratified by enough states to become law.)

What did they settle on?

• A stronger national government, with clear limits.
• A system with checks and balances to prevent abuse.
• Protections for the independence of the states, something that mattered deeply to them.

This is why the Constitution isn’t simply a set of rules.

It is a carefully balanced agreement between people who wanted to live in one country but still have a say in how things worked locally, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Our Founding Fathers never wanted a top-down, one-size-fits-all government, with D.C. telling the people far away how to live their lives.

The power of the people, We the People, is through our states.

If we forget that, we risk forgetting who we are.