Our country was given a very special gift in our Constitution. The founders who wrote the laws of our land wrote them not for themselves, but for future generations. They studied the history of past civilizations in order to understand the policies, ideas, and issues that can span lifetimes. They knew that the people who lived in America would not stay the same, and they knew there would eventually be a time that things began to falter, but they labored to make it as easy as possible for us to stand up to a tyrant when one comes to power and expected us to fight as soon as someone took power that was not given to them. The federalist and anti-federalist papers prove their knowledge, and prove that they wrote the Constitution with future generations in mind. They gave us this government because they knew it was the best for us. But there is a reason it is not working. Our constitution was designed for a virtuous society, the society our founders hoped would proceed them. In Centinal 1, in the Anti-Federalist papers, it declares simply and straightforwardly, “A free government can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous.” We must change ourselves to live up to the constitution, not change the constitution to live down to us. The government set up in the American constitution can lead a country no matter what time, but an unvirtuous people can never fathom the power that our constitution has. So before you claim that America’s founding principles are too outdated or that they can no longer work for today’s society, check and see if it is instead that today’s society can no longer work for our constitution. You may be surprised what you would discover a virtuous people is capable of.

Yours truly,

Publius