This past Saturday was Constitution Day.

The 17th of September, 1787 is the day that the Constitution was signed in Philadelphia.

It is one of the fundamental documents of the United States. Of course, we have the Declaration of Independence. That is our inspirational document- it sets the desire of our nation to ensure that we can provide the best life for our citizenry.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed“.

Amazingly, this document was created and signed by folks who were slaveowners (at least 1/3 of them). Promising that all Americans shall be free.

It is the Constitution, however, that provides the “wherewithal” to ensure that America will deliver on its promise. This architectural document provides a structure by which the nation can achieve those ideals. To use the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, this is the “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir”.  King’s utterance was similar to the thoughts of Frederick Douglass who averred that the Declaration of Independence promises of liberty and equality are eternal, despite the fact that America has betrayed those promises.

President Abraham Lincoln voiced the same concerns in his Gettysburg Address.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… that we here highly resolve that these dead (those that fought at Gettysburg, testing that this nation could so conceived and dedicated) shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.“

And, yet here we are, some 235 years after the adoption of the Constitution, dithering and bickering among one another, replete with tribalism and disunity. Not so different from events that presented themselves when Abraham Lincoln was our President.

The progressive disintegration of Blue model America (“Capitalism plus democracy leads to mass prosperity and deep social stability“), as a result of the Information Revolution and the globalization forces that were its progeny, has now formed to be the most important driver of American domestic politics and foreign policy today. This failure is what has led to our current tribalistic tendencies.

What should we do? Do we follow the implorations of ex-President Trump and escalate this into another Civil War, an insurrection against our government? Or do we join together and find ways to honor our promises and continue to improve our lot, to ensure we all can enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

There are some necessary steps we can take to afford our citizenry the ability to reset our national conditions and psyche, to continue to develop the means to honor the promise of Declaration of Independence.

We can attenuate our fascination with social media, where we seem to have elected to believe that the view of others are not debatable- but are instead disreputable. It’s time for a return to a modicum of civility.

We must reinstate the teaching of civics. Where our citizenry will know that there are three branches of our government, who are their Representatives and Senators, and how our government is structured to provide its services.

We need to reduce our adherence to labels. Whether it’s partisanship that allows us to separate ourselves as if our utterances are visible light passing through a prism, separating us into various tribes, or that we refuse to maintain friendships (or more) with those who vote a different way than we do.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport. That means that we all must be engaged citizens, working together to deliver on the promises of our foundational documents.

We are a creedal nation; and now that we see the difficulties and failures of our national creed doesn’t mean the creed is wrong. It means we have failed to execute the architecture to build upon that creed. We need to deliver for working class Americans, for Black and Brown America, and reduce the inequalities that we have allowed to perpetuate when we adopted Milton Friedman’s business credos.

It took a decade or two to see the wrongheadedness that resulted from the Friedman credo. And, it’s barely a year or two since we began recognizing that we must deliver for all our stakeholders.

Just like inequality did not predominate immediately upon our change to Friedmanism’s, neither will it wash away as we alter our focus.

It’s up to us to work together NOW- and in the future- to ensure our free institutions and free markets will deliver upon our premises and promises.