A New “Remedy:” America’s Social Contract Under Siege

America floundered after the Revolution ended.  A confederation of sovereign states jealously guarding their individual prerogatives, bickering constantly, the central government virtually powerless.  The Articles of Confederation was a disaster.  

In 1786 commissioners from five states met in Annapolis, ostensibly to discuss trade between the states and international trade relationships.  Among the 12 in attendance were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.  They apparently did not accomplish much, but they did agree to meet the following year in Philadelphia, this time inviting commissioners from all the states.  The stated purpose of the convention was not to develop a new form of government, however, that was precisely what James Madison, among several others, intended.  The convention was to create a new social contract between the people and the states and save the union.

The Philadelphia Convention gathered on May 14, 1787. After waiting for more delegates to arrive they got down to business, debating and agreeing on the rules of Convention.  On May 29^th Edmund Randolph of Virginia “opened the main business” of the Convention.  Speaking to the “crisis,” that is the failure of the Articles of Confederation, and “prophecies of the American downfall,” he proposed four objectives “to revise the federal system.  We ought to “inquire 1. into the properties, which such a government ought to possess.  2. The defects of the confederation. 3. the danger of our situation& 4. The remedy.”

That ‘remedy’ has withstood the test of change since the Constitution was adopted by the States in 1789. Two hundred and thirty-six years.  The Constitution was and is not perfect, in fact it was not designed to be infallible, like a religious text proclaiming the word of God.  It was made by humans for humans, and they had the wisdom to recognize that things, well, change.   A Bill of Rights was added early, critical amendments were enacted over the decades.  Slavery was finally abolished (although after 96 years of relentless brutality), African Americans and women won the right to vote, birthright citizenship.   It is the social contract that endures and keeps us bound to one another. It’s what makes us American.

That remedy, that social contract, our Constitution is at risk.  Day after day the current administration attacks America’s social contract.  Executive orders rain down like hail stones, crushing the tender plants in our garden of democracy. If anything, they are messages to his base, a veneer of action, but they are also projecting the America he wants and the social contract he envisions. It isn’t a pretty one.

What happens when his attempts at changing the Constitution through fiat fails.  The Supreme Court says, “no.”  What then?  I doubt he will retreat; he will fight.  One way to fight is to organize a new constitutional convention, a new remedy, a new social contract. Can you imagine Georgia’s delegate being Marjorie Taylor Greene? 

Will our most cherished rights disappear into the ether?  Replaced by an authoritarian social contract?  Emojis of flags and flames and fists. If the convention meets and writes a new constitution, I suspect It will fundamentally alter our relationship to the government, and not in a good way.   

If Trump’s executive orders are a guide, a new social contract will eschew separation of powers, in its place a powerful executive, with unlimited terms.  King like.  Gone will be an independent judiciary, replaced by a Supreme Court appointed by the President, serving at his will. Gone will be the House of Representatives and a Senate, replaced by a unicameral body elected by state representatives, a rubber stamp affair.  A state religion declared.  A Christian religious test to hold office.  Separate but equal codified.

Don’t forget about The Bill of Rights and all amendments that will be nullified. Do you see them offering robust press freedoms?  Protecting you from unreasonable searches and seizures.? What about jury trial, or right to counsel.  Do you see that being in the new social contract?  I see the curtailment of rights, women’s right in particular.   Same sex marriage banned, access to contraception gone (Recall Justice Thomas’ call for cases), homosexuality criminalized.  The list of rights rescinded would go on and on.  It wouldn’t be a positivist social contact it would be negativist one, restricting rights not establishing rights.  It won’t be a mixed government of the one, the few, the many.  It will be the one. Is that an America you can live in?

That’s the social contract I see down the road if people stay at home, keep their heads down, and give in to Trumpian chaos and mayhem. Yes, reform is needed to get money out of the campaigns, stopping politicians from enriching themselves, keep the oligarchs from buying elections like Musk is now trying to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but a new federal system that gives up on democracy – the many — is not the ‘remedy.’  This new Trumpian social contract would be the opposite of reform, it would turn America not back to 1954 or 1859, or to 1789. It would transform America into an autocracy of one man rule..

This weekend, May 5^th, there will be a rally at the Louisa Courthouse from noon to two.  Come have your voices heard.  Celebrate the 238^th anniversary of the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.