By Larry Craig

A syndicated columnist wrote a column Sunday in which he made some charges about our Constitution and the founding of our country that I believe need to be answered. These charges are not unique to him. You will hear them often if you at least try to know what’s going on in the world.

He believes that our Constitution is flawed. Not less-than-perfect flawed, but in a major way such that it needs to be either replaced or revised in significant ways. Flawed such that our nation was founded on bad ideas that make our whole history suspect.

The columnist identifies six of these “flaws,” and they need to be answered.

1) The columnist believes our Constitution is racist “because neither black or Native Americans were allowed the same rights as whites.”

First of all, there is nothing in the Constitution that denies them those rights. Secondly, Native Americans weren’t living under our Constitution. Not because we denied them that privilege, but because they had their own nations. Even now, they are United States citizens, but they are autonomous nations within our own. We are limited in what we can make them do.

Blacks had the same rights under the Constitution as whites.

But then why were they still slaves?

That’s more a question for the Declaration of Independence than the Constitution. The Declaration recognizes that all human beings have unalienable rights given to them by God. They could have been more specific if they intended a narrower definition of “all.”

But the colonies had free states, and they had slave states. They could have created one new nation or two. They chose one. It eventually required a Civil War to get all the states on the same page here, and that still did not resolve all the issues. But the fault is not in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The fault is with people. People seldom live up to their ideals.

2) The columnist believes that our Constitution upholds slavery, though he is not clear exactly how it does this. Perhaps it is “the outsize political power granted to slave states.”

This is a common mistake that is constantly repeated but never really explained.

It has to do with the 3/5 clause that says essentially that blacks are counted as 3/5 of a white person when counting people for legislative representation. Critics contend that this shows disregard for black people and gives slave states additional representation in Congress. On the contrary, slave states got less representation than they wanted, not more. If blacks were counted at 3/5, then the total population of the state used to determine legislative representation is smaller than if they were counted as full persons.

Does this demean black people? Not at all. The Founders were essentially saying to the slave states, If you’re not giving them full participation in society, then you shouldn’t get full participation in Congress. The Founders sought to diminish the influence of the slave states in Congress, and this was the compromise they reached to do just that.

3) The columnist believes that the Constitution gives second-class citizenship to women, but again he doesn’t explicitly say how.

I have read other sources that say the same thing, and they focus on the statement in the Declaration of Independence that says that all men are created equal. Well, what about women?

I can only attribute that thinking to the dumbing down of our schools and the politization of everything in our country.

The word “man” has been used to refer to humans of both sexes for all of English language history until the last few decades when people started being offended by the idea. We used to speak of mankind without anyone ever thinking that women weren’t included. Anyone who thinks the Declaration of Independence isn’t speaking of women when it states that all men are created equal is either uneducated, dumb, or intentionally political.

4) The columnist believes that the early addition of amendments to the Constitution proved that it was a flawed document from the beginning.

In truth, the Founders debated whether the Constitution should include a list of these inalienable rights. They were concerned that if they were named, people would soon or eventually think that those rights came from the government and not from God. We are seeing that today.

So, yes, the first 10 amendments are called the Bill of Rights. And, no, they are not a “revision” of the Constitution.

5) The columnist believes the electoral system is faulty and therefore further evidence that the Constitution is a highly flawed document. The Founders were apprehensive about the rise of political parties, but they pretty much expected it. That rise caused the need for a modification of the Electoral College, but that was like calibrating a machine once you get it going. That doesn’t mean the machine is flawed, but it just needs to be tuned to the circumstances.

6) The columnist believes that the undemocratic nature of the Senate is a flaw. The truth is, the Founders did not want a pure democracy. If they did, they wouldn’t have even needed a Senate. If the Senate was run just like the House, why even create one? It would be redundant. The Senate was there to preserve the rights and integrity of the states. That was their intention. But the concept has been ignored since the direct election of senators was implemented by the 17th Amendment. That does not mean the original Constitution is flawed. It just means that people today either don’t know the original intention, or they want to change the intention.

The columnist believes that recognizing all these faults of the Founders and the founding documents is good for our country. Except that there is enough here, if everything is accepted as given, to undermine confidence in the basic goodness of our country and so give support to those who want to radically reinvent our country.

These are not minor issues, and at some point, every one of us will need to decide whether the United States is a country that must be defended or upended.