Before we go any further, we need to look at what the founders expected of us. This is going to be a hard section to hear. At the beginning of this section, I told you I hoped to convince you our Constitution was a treasure. In my mind, the fact that it asks a lot from us does not change that. The founders are about to point out what we are doing wrong. But they also tell us what we need to do right if we sincerely want Justice, Tranquility, and the Blessings of Liberty. I still say this is a Treasure.
Very first, they expected we would all be concerned about the common good. John Adams puts this most succinctly in the preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. This document actually predates our own constitution by 7 years, but Adams not only wrote the Massachusetts constitution but then went on to be a major participant in the writing of ours. His view of the common good, and the necessity to remember it, was shared generally by the signers, and carried forward into our own document.
In his words “The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.”
If we are serious about saving our Constitution and our way of life, we are going to have to acknowledge that our “fixing” is going to have to start right here. With the common good. John Adams reminds us that the common good starts with laws that are for the common good. Not as much bad will as we can get away with, but the Common Good, in every law, all the time.
The second goal the founders hold out to us is to form no factions. When we look at this carefully, it is just common good from the other side. James Madison is pointing out the problems of not paying attention to it rather than the benefits of remembering it. This quote comes from James Madison writing in the Federalist Papers, No 19. He wrote this article specifically to warn against the tendency for factions to form, and the harm they inevitably do to the common good.
He says ”By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
In today's English, he defines a faction as a group united by a cause which they support, in spite of the fact that it is adverse to the rights or needs of others in the community.
Sounds like our political parties. The founders thought/hoped, that the the legislators from each state would naturally have differing interests. They expected that if each states legislators was intent on serving their own citizens, there would be too many points of view to have them all boil down to A or B. And in that environment, they believed it would not be too much to expect that everyone could coalesce around a Common Good that they could then all support. But then, they also expected that the INDIVIDUAL legislators would be the high men on the totem pole.