The Constitution and Bill of Rights as a Set of National Goals

I was doing the reading for this week, and I realized how much in common the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has with you your goals, planning, and habits assignment (see posts below).

We are so used to living under the guidelines of a Constitution and Bill of Rights which is 200 plus years old, it is easy to forget these documents were once shiny, brand new, and radical. These documents represented the goals folks wanted to follow and a plan to get there, but folks still had to figure out what it meant to live lives in a a nation planned with the goal in mind of maximizing everyone's liberty. In short, at the point where the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written--1790 or so, the nation and individuals were learning the habits the nation needed to live as free men and women in a society of equally free men and women.

This sense of not having everything figured out is so important to your understanding early America and your selves.

In many cases, you are going through the same steps toward learning how to live a life which allows you to reach your goals and to maximize the benefits which come with freedom. Think about it. You have all these goals and the expectation of the liberty which comes from gaining adulthood and maturity. You have a sense of what you must do to pursue your idea of happiness, but you are still learning the knowledge, skills, and developing the habits it takes to be a happy, successful adult in a free--more or less--society. This is one of the things college does for you and for society; it gives new adults a space to figure out their dreams and prepare for the future.

Now think about a whole society going through the same growing pains, but they can't send the whole society to college to learn and figure itself out. Instead, they've got to live and go through a hard process of trail, much error, and strife to figure out what it means to live in a free society and keep it going.

Here's where society was in 1790:

Goals?...check...create a society which maximizes individual liberty
Plan?..check...see Constitution and Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence
Having the habits of respect, tolerance, being free, cussedness, and a developed willingness to work for the public good as well as one's own...not so much.

In 1790, these last still needed to be figured out. Otherwise, women would have had the vote, the slaves would have been freed, a free public education would have been built into the Constitution, etc. Just as you are now, America in 1790 still had to figure out itself, where it wanted to go, and develop the habits of thought and action needed to get there.

What habits are you going to have to learn to be a free adult and help keep the great experiment going?