the C

[Michael Hoover]

> The Constitution is a text imbued with mystical power and authority 
> by most Americans. My major beef with it, aside from that unthinking 
> reverence, is the kind of governmental structure it gave us - 
> designed quite consciously to frustrate popular will - three 
> branches, the abomination of the Senate, states rights, all that. I 
> think free speech, free assembly, and fair trials are good things, 
> very good things in fact. We could use more of them in practice and 
> not just on paper. "Paper" - reverence for the constitutional text 
> rather than actual democratic practice - is one reason we don't have 
> more of them.
> Doug

So you're saying that you don't buy stock high school government textbook
blather about 'Founding Fathers" creating democratic institutions that 
faithfully represent 'We the People':
'In its immense capacity to accomodate change, the American political
system may be one of the wonders of the modern world.' (Rosencranz,
Chapin, Wagner & Brown, _American Government_)

'In our nation, political power reflects the will of all the people,
not the will of the few at the top.' (Hartley & Vincent, _American
Civics_)

And textbooks used as catechism to teach civic religion whose principal 
piece of faith is that US government is best in world don't disappear 
after high school as title of Patterson, Davidson, & Ripley's _Toward a 
More Perfect Union_ attests.

College students will be introduced to following by likes of Seymour
Martin Lipset:
'American social structure [in the constitution period] did not
possess those great "gaps" which...conspire to separate ordinary
people from their government." (_The First New Nation_)

Of course, some college texts do admit that framers were aristocratic
group looking out for their own interests but authors contribute to
facade by praising them for writing constitution that has allowed 
democracy to gradually evolve.     Michael Hoover