Ok, folks, I’m back to writing long-form essays. Apologies for the delay since the last one, but life has been, well, complicated. Please know that I’m back in the saddle and have returned to regular programming.
William Gladstone once famously said of the American Constitution that it was “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man”? I agree. The creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was the culmination of the most innovative period of constitutional statesmanship ever known to man before or since. I also think the Constitution played a major role in creating the freest society in world history. Its principles and institutions and its forms and formalities came together to create what I call the world’s first laissez-faire constitution—a constitution and a form of government limited in its power to coerce people. In other words, the new Constitution created a government that set men and women free to pursue their highest aspirations.
Although the new constitution did not institutionalize a complete separation of economy and State, church and State, and school and State, it did create a government about as close as any in history to achieving that ideal. The greatest virtue of the new federal government is that, for the most part, it got out of the way of America’s individualistic and enterprising population.
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