Foreward

I have taken a bold step.

Looking around at the state of the United States and our government, I came to the horrifying and gut-wrenching conclusion that, though the Constitution (which I will refer to throughout this commentary as the “Constitution of 1789”) still exists as a ceremonial document, we no longer are governed by it in any meaningful way. First, there is the incremental erosion of rights and the drift of institutional powers that has taken place over more than two centuries of living with it. But second, and more fundamentally, the systems described in the Constitution of 1789 don’t function the way the document says that they do. Congress is not a check on the President. The President makes laws by executive order. No one seems to respect the judiciary when it is inconvenient. We are no longer a nation of laws, no matter how much we pretend to be.

Now, I am a veteran. I’m no dog of war, no Medal of Honor recipient. I was, at best, an aircraft mechanic of low to average skill (but I was a pretty good Euc driver, though). Still, I served honorably. I was deployed for Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and I supported Operation Just Cause, and a whole bunch of other real-world operations that I never knew the names of. In other words, I was just a regular, run-of-the-mill airman who swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. And that’s the rub.

Somewhere, somehow, that constitution fell. It no longer functioned as law, except when convenient to those in power. Sometime, when we weren’t paying attention, Congress began to serve only themselves, instead of us. Companies, unions, and political action committees became people, with louder voices than humans.

So, I took a step. I did something risky. See, I won’t pretend the Constitution of 1789 is anything other than a ritual document anymore. It isn’t. But the principles it was built on, now those live on. So I started thinking. We need a new constitution, but that’s very scary. The idea of starting from scratch makes a lot of people leery. What could happen? But what happens if we don’t do something?

I took another step. What if, I thought, we had a fully-functional document to use as a starting point for debate? What if we had something we could argue over, instead of starting from scratch and hoping for the best? So I wrote. I wrote what I call the “National Charter of the United States.” It isn’t intended to be the final product (although I’m proud of it, and I wouldn’t be disappointed to see it become the law of the land). It’s designed to be a legitimate starting point for a debate about what happens next.

What you’re reading now is my commentary on that document. The quotation sections are the actual text of the Charter. The regular text is my explanation of what I was thinking about and why I made this or that change, and so on.

You may notice that the Charter isn’t written in “legalese.” That is important to me, and I think to most people. How can we be governed by laws we can’t even understand? There is a glossary at the end to define certain technical terms that I had to leave in for one reason or another. But, all in all, I’ve tried to keep it pretty readable.

I’ve also included a lot of footnotes. You’ll notice a lot of them have legal citations like “U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1” instead of something clearer like “U.S. Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 1.” That’s not because those citations are better or easier to understand – they aren’t. It’s because legal scholars expect this format as proof that you belong to their club. I’m following their rules so they’ll take this work seriously (if they haven’t already blown me off while reading this foreword). But let’s be honest about what that’s about. It’s about elitist gatekeeping. And, if you read this Charter, you’ll quickly see that’s exactly the kind of thing this document fights against.

So, please read! It’s dense. There’s a lot here. You may agree with some of it. You may scream at me while reading other parts of it. I hope so. Let’s start talking about what comes next.