Word: documented
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Newtonian, mechanical metaphor was prevalent during the Industrial Revolution. As America was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the document, James Russell Lowell observed, "After our Constitution got fairly into working order, it really seemed as if we had invented a machine that would go of itself, and this begot a faith in our luck...
Anyone who doubts that the Constitution is a living thing that changes and evolves should think about the difference between the document then and now. As framed 200 years ago, the Constitution was virtually paranoid on the subject of democracy. James Madison wrote in The Federalist about his view of democracy and direct government. If every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, he thought, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. The founders began, "We the People." And yet "the People" had very little to do with writing the thing. The framers, working behind closed doors and shut...
...dozen years ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart gave a speech to a group of journalists regarding the First Amendment's protection of a free press. "The Constitution," he said, "is not a self-executing document . . . If you went back to the original understanding of our ancestors, back in the early years of the 19th century, you would find that their understanding of this clause and the Constitution in their judgment allowed them to enact the Alien and Sedition laws. And if those laws were still on the books, Richard Nixon would still be President of the U.S. and Spiro...
...third eye -- was turned into an institution. The genius of the Constitution has been the moral restlessness it embodies, and its capacity to change even while its basic structure abides. Today, all but six of the world's nations either have or are committed to having a single-document constitution. That idea was born in Philadelphia. Reverence is due to those men in the hot summer of the Enlightenment. They changed the world...
...timely reminder that debate over the intent of the framers began with the framers themselves. Consensus on the virtues of the Constitution was slow to build and subject to rupture over passionate issues such as slavery and workers' rights. In 1843 the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison termed the document a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell." Early in this century, historians like Charles Beard tried to brand its provisions the work of a privileged few seeking to defend their property. The document was not made, one Beard follower wrote, "by the kind of men whom we believe made...