THE FOUNDERS’ BRILLIANCE
JULY 2026 COLUMN
BY ROGER CARLTON
As I close in
on 80 years of age, my thoughts often turn to lessons learned from more than 50
years in the crucible of South Florida politics. One of those lessons was to
surround yourself with smart people, listen to their input on complex
solutions, decide which direction to go in, assign responsibility to your team members, and then announce that direction to your community with a clear message and achievable goals.
To confess my
political leanings, I enjoy a late-afternoon toddy, then watch Ari Melber on MSNBC and David Muir on ABC. The rest of my television evening, with a few brilliant exceptions, is filler to bedtime. Sometimes the news of Washington’s
kerfuffles leads me to question how a single controversy or a bundle of
controversies can lead to a revolutionary movement rather than evolutionary
accommodation.
Perhaps the
story of our independence 250 years ago begins way before 1776, when the
Declaration of Independence was signed. The original colonists came to America for many reasons, including religious persecution, economic opportunity, and escaping the rigid class systems in Europe. They were a tough bunch who carved
the original thirteen colonies from the wilderness.
King George
III reigned for 59 years. He was brilliant in his own way, supporting study in
agriculture and astronomy. He also defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. He suffered from a form of derangement that kept him from realizing that his decrees and laws, along with Parliament’s, and his personal behavior, would eventually become intolerable to his subjects. The best-known of these acts include the Stamp Act (1765), the Currency Act (1764), the Tea Act (1773), and the Intolerable Acts (1774), which were meant to punish Boston for dumping tea into Boston Harbor. Nearly ten years of foolish and retaliatory acts led the colonists to believe they were being taxed without representation. That
is something to think about today, as numerous state and federal actions seem
designed to limit the hard-fought right to vote.
Back to the notion of the Founders’ brilliance. There are five key takeaways. The first is Natural and Inalienable Rights. We think of these rights as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Second is Equality. We think of this as All Men Are Created Equal. This principle is still being debated. The third concept is Consent of the Governed. This means that power flows from the people and not from on high through royalty.
Right to Revolution comes next. In 1776, this
meant separation from England because the King’s reign had become intolerable.
Rule of Law was established in the Declaration of Independence. Pretty gutsy
since the structure of our system would not be established until 1787. The
Founders demonstrated their brilliance by listing 27 grievances in the
Declaration. The key grievances were taxation without representation, the suspension of the right to trial by jury, and the forced quartering of troops. Forgive me for a
little sarcasm. What if King George had sent his Vice King to the colonies to
negotiate a resolution of the grievances?
Well, the
rest is history. King George sent his superior military forces to crush the
offensive colonists. Five years later, Lord Cornwallis surrendered in Yorktown, Virginia,
and we were independent of England. Think about the challenge facing the
Founders. What do we do with this newfound freedom? There were 2.8 million
people living in the colonies, including nearly 500,000 slaves. The trip from
Maine to Georgia could take months. Communication was very difficult. “Nation-building” had not yet made it into the lexicon, and we did not want to be beholden to foreign powers.
So, how do you get started to form a government once the war is won? Our answer was to call together representatives to draw up the Articles of Confederation, which were quickly determined to be inadequate in their definition of the powers of the federal government.
The subsequent Constitutional Convention took place in
Philadelphia for over four months in 1787. Fifty-five delegates were led by
George Washington to develop the Constitution. They were all brilliant, as was
General Washington’s leadership. So many grand ideas were incorporated in the
document. The Senate would have two delegates from each state, while the House
would have proportionate representation based on population. The relative
powers of the states and the federal government were established. Can you
imagine the debate and compromises that led to the document's adoption in just
four months?
I am running
out of space; however, it is important to understand that nine state
legislatures had to adopt the document. That led to debates between the Federalists, who wanted strong national powers, and the Anti-Federalists, who did not. The process took four years and resulted in a compromise, which, in my mind, is one of the most brilliant solutions in governance in modern times. The basic
Constitution was left intact, and the first 10 Amendments were simultaneously
adopted to protect the people from the federal government's excessive use of power. In 250 years,
the document has been amended only 27 times. Two of those amendments were the
ridiculous establishment of Prohibition and its abolishment 13 years later.
In conclusion, my friends, would it not be nice if every candidate for public office had to
certify that they read the Constitution and its Amendments before they
collected a nickel of campaign contributions? An annual refresher course would
be helpful.
