American Constitution: Democracy and National Security
This blog has no other purposes but sharing my reflection on America's Written Constitution authorized by Yale University via Coursera. I shall have no responsibility for any uses or citation beyond my grant.
Photo: Philadelphia Convention, source Google
This essay delves into relationships between democracy and national security with focus on the rise of American Constitution written by We the People. It has three sub-themes of analysis. The first orientates the readers with how the Constitution was made the most democratic. The second covers how the Constitution reflects concerns of national security, followed by the third theme dedicating my personal reflections on American Constitution and the sense of nation.
American Constitution was written in a very democratic process where ordinary talked and voted with reference to the Preamble, which came to public. Understandably, there are two important elements in making the Constitution democratic, which include the short Preamble and media—newspaper. Then let me trace back a bit to a history of Philadelphia Convention in late 1780s. Back then James Wilson known as the framer of American Constitution wrote a preamble characterized for public level of understanding.
Nonetheless, it was still not accessible until September 19th, 1787 when the preamble was published in newspapers publically. In fact, such the press release was extraordinary as done behind closed door before the Philadelphia Convention was done. It was known that a group of [republican] lawyers had intention to get it published. Thus, professor Amar said that Publish, Republican and People are etymologically relational due to their commonality of getting things down to public. September 19th was the first time when the preamble went to public through media newspaper while the formal Philadelphia was still a draft in a long journey to democracy. The newspaper publication allowed the public to pre-aware of characteristics of the Constitution in advance so that they could talk and discuss before voting. Arguably media mediates people to drafted policies for benefits of democratic discussion.
Why do the public matter? To kick out the British threat, American Revolution consumed devotions from diversity of people including slaves, propertless people and women. The linkages between national security and democracy are therefore seen in the Bills of Rights guaranteeing absence of property, gender and religion qualifications for suffrage. It means that those formerly excluded from suffrage became included after their constitutions to national security were realized. People with no property fought in frontline while women, in absence of wen, had to work giving economic supports at the backline. Because of these reasons, women and propertyless people gained suffrage accordingly.
In addition to pluralistic suffrage, the Constitution reflects linkage between democracy and national security based on geo-strategic argument. This simply means that the Constitution was structured to form a perfect indivisibility of states on model of perfect unions in England and Scotland which had natural self-defense systems like mountains and seas. Signing on the Constitution means that individual states could not leave any other states at time of crisis. Every state had to be united within structural coherence and framework of the document. Otherwise, common defense would not be reached. All the framers wanted was the unified indivisible self-protection from outsiders and aliens like British and non-US natives.
For the sake of national security,. What I find inconsistent lies on a question of who are considered aliens. I may take a lot at James Wilson from a migrant family, but he contributed to realization of the Constitution and became known as Father of America. Salves were at first considered as aliens because they were brought from other countries. Then they could vote and be recognized as American citizens after being realized for contribution in wars. Therefore, I have to argue that American Constitution is very flexible in the sense that ‘national’ security implies vagueness of definition. The meaning of nation still limits to how much an individual pays tribute to American states regardless nation of origin and races. So if they talk about national security, they have to think of who are their people of their nation. Their nation is which holds scattering states under common British colonizer. Therefore, to put in other word, the Constitution came before nation.
