Pluribus or Unum? Why the First Constitution Still Matters

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These days real life policy issues, such as the right to choose, the right to marry, the right to vote, and the right to bear arms, seem hopelessly tangled up in more abstract constitutional disputes between national power and state’s rights.

The tangle is unavoidable because our Founding Fathers left us with two warring constitutional traditions.  The Founding Fathers of 1776 wrote our first constitution, The Articles of Confederation,  which went into effect in 1781. It favored states rights. Eight years later a largely different group, the Founding Fathers of 1789, overturned the first constitution in an extra-legal bloodless coup and substituted  another constitution that favored national power. We generally call the second constitution THE Constitution because we forget there was a first.

July 15, 1-3 at Methodist Church, United Methodist Church, 1515 Fredericks St, San Luis Obispo

Our current political predicaments often stem from the fact that the Spirit of ‘89 did not entirely quash the Spirit of ‘76.  The course revisits our first constitution, for some of us perhaps for the first time, in order to gain richer perspectives on the origins and operations of our second.

Dick Miller, an academic in recovery,  is a frequent taker and giver of LLCC courses.

Purchase tickets for this event HERE.