This was an attempt to overcome bias caused by a lifetime of lessons.
To understand the founding documents its critical to understanding the definitions of the terms used 200 years ago.
Step 1: Read Pre-Civil War Word definitions to get into the correct mindset
Step 2: Read Madison - the people to understand how important the concept of "the people" was at the time.
Step 3: Read Virginia Proposed Amendments to see it wasn't just Madison
Upside Down Exceptualism
The night after the holiday for Martin Luther King. I dreamt that philosophers from the Age of Reason wrote the constitution. It's wonderful, tragic and surreal. Every individual is rational with their reasoning. Rational thinking is great except they also have horrible unexamined assumptions (precepts). It's not totally random but they pick and choose precepts to use based on the conversation. Rational beings with bi-polar actions striving for righteousness are chaotic.
The whole country is in solid agreement that half of the population has lost their minds. They use the very best method for a population to guess which half it is. Then tragically they don’t choose the best people to figure it out. They pick the persons with the most attractive sounding promises. I don’t know how the dream ends.
When the constitution was ratified, it was supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people. That was still true for Lincoln with his selected precepts. It was less true for Grant. This nightmare has dystopia density distributions.
In 1776, Jefferson wrote all men are equal. He did not mean all people, and he did not mean the old boys. In 1787, the constitutional convention began. Madison and others wanted to have a constitution based on the writings of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Law. This philosopher had written “sometimes slavery is necessary" (in French) Clearly the easiest precept to use for slave owners with confirmation bias. They could say slavery is bad, but my slave is necessary.
A constitution like this was exceptionally good for the slave holding states. It was also somewhat urgent because the French were taking male equality literally. The French revolution in 1789 did not free the slaves. If the abolitionists had been more numerous the slave owning states would have toppled like dominos. The states knew firsthand how revolutions work.
The Haitian soldiers that fought the British in Savannah during the war were too good to ignore. Escaped Haitians were already hiding in France’s Louisiana. Mississippi was not going to be safe for the Georgia militia recapturing runaways. France did not free the slaves until 1794, four years after they sold the physical control of Haiti for a painfully large promissory note.
In 1787, the risk was real even if the fears were not realized. Best practice for risk mitigation requires early action. It was possible the states might need federal troops; they would not wait for the last minute.
Governments designed by philosophers are really confusing. The Socratic dialogs never answer the initial question and end acknowledging confusion. Pragmatic patriots like Patrick Henry could never vote to ratify a government based on social contract theory. In the real world, he never did.
The primary feature of the social contract philosophy of government is that each individual gives their consent to be governed in exchange for the government's services. The authority to be governed comes from the bottom and not from the royalty on top. Authority is supposed to be upside down. Authority and responsibility take different paths through the structure of the government. Each path has a check and balances the other path. Each office holder has two identities. The individual can be political. The office cannot. Instead, we are taught the government, as an institution, has the authority. If philosophers had won, that would be wrong.
The authority would be collected by the election process and provided by the state election boards to the federal government. Then people previously confirmed would confirm the authority specific to the role from the people onto the newly elected official.
For example, the authority required for Homeland security to do their responsibilities would be provided by the Senate. The cabinet’s responsibility would be defined by legislation. Confirmation hearings would check the readiness of the person to assume the authority for the defined responsibilities. The secretary’s authority is indirectly provided by the people who elected the Senators. It's convoluted because that is how you get real effective checks and balances. Only a philosopher could think this up. A strictly military mind would reject every aspect it could get away with rejecting.
To align with our history, at different points in time over the last 150 years, alternative ways that are much more efficient processes would have been chosen to really make things “right” as fast as possible. When you already know the answer, who needs to think about where to aim the weapons. Measured cost efficiency for providing answers to issues is optimal if you use the ready, fire, aim technique. The second most efficient is to use the traditional order but to aim without thinking about cause or collateral damages. While sound reasoning is taking time claiming to be more effective, nothing tangible is getting done.
During the Grant administration the people of the former confederate states, would have precepts they could not conquer. They would not try to conquer them even after they were able. The federal government could not retrain them or wait for them to figure it out. The social contract breached by the succession would not be fully restored. Every school child would be taught, and university professors would teach reconstruction had been completed. The government is working as intended except for those ideas from the opposing political party. The federal government permanently usurps the authority of the sovereign.
Alternative histories are interesting, but most are too complicated. The least complicated one is the most useful.
The Bill of Rights might have become annotations clarifying the constitution. Madison claimed they were not needed for a reason. They were needed because even in 1788 after the constitution was ratified elected officials did not understand how upside-down authority could work. Madison’s proposed amendments were changed. Only those changes between versions made the meaning of the constitution different.
At the end, but not at the beginning the officials must have known why in the first election the electorate must be only landowners and why the slaves could not be freed within the body of the constitution. They did not discover that all government sovereignty had been removed including the states and the governments within the states until 1793. The 11th amendment was the response to being made aware.
But the hypothetical premise might be flawed because Marbury v Madison (1803) shows that either the philosophy of Madison or the philosophy of John Marshall must be mistaken. Unless winning means a better process of governance and not just a specific action. Binary thinkers would never be convinced. But quality assurance professionals would endorse this definition. And philosophically speaking isn’t governance a process to be incrementally improved to become a more perfect union.
The disinformation is just a few words that create the wrong understanding overall. Jefferson did not instruct Madison. At best he requested Madison withhold Marbury’s appointment. If Jefferson was the root cause the case should have been Marbury versus Jefferson. Now there’s a pattern of not naming the president.
Sidenote: presidents are supposed to be checking the work of the cabinet. They cannot objectively check the work if it's their idea in the first place. It should not be surprising that authorizations are upside down when upside down was the overall design.
The constitution is described as the law of the land and the supreme authority. Instead, it's a contract with a set of goals and a mission statement. The authority and client is always the people and the service provider is the government.
Judges and Magistrates render their opinions based on the confines of the law. Justices have a different title because their role was always supposed to be different. Database designers and object-oriented programmers would agree it is best practice. I doubt if any Doctor of Philosophy in any academic field would write a paper where they freely chose different names to obscure commonality.
When section 6 of the constitution was being discussed, Madison suggested the federal government should have the power claimed by Marshall for the Supreme Court. .Adams, Jefferson, Marbury, Madison and Marshall should have all known why the supremacy of the federal court system was required. The system would not improve if sound reasoning was not used at all levels of government.
The supremacy of the supreme court was established over the process described by the legislation. The country had communities where most properties had slaves and firearms and other communities where neither vice was permitted by their church. There was no uniformity in results of sound reasoning between communities. But would a check of the reasoning still be useful? Philosophically the process being checked includes intent because intent changes the reasoning. Therefore, textualism would not have been enough, and the 14th amendment due process clause ought to have been redundant.
Every experienced database designer knows how to begin and work through the problem of getting the authorizations from the person in jurisdiction of service to the government organization responsible for providing that service. Effectively it's a need-to-know secret because this problem never comes up in any other non-database context.
Everyone is equal under the law means that no person can double authorize.
A government should not conflict with itself means the responsibilities to be authorized are unique.
Geographic areas can overlap
Because government units cooperate each responsibility requires a unit to be supreme for that specific responsibility.
Other units must be subordinate for that specific responsibility
The unit of government that most frequently performs the responsibility should be made capable and supreme for that responsibility
All of the chief executives including governors become a quality control check
those positions do not have supremacy on almost anything
the sign off on other people's decisions
If the above is upheld in court
Trump becomes irrelevant
He was allowed to be elected
He wasn't allowed to run in every state
Chaos reigns cleaning up
At least 58 years of incorrect rulings about election campaign finances.
And number of representatives
And the entire legal community needs training
A college history professor would likely offer the following critique of the document's historical facts and interpretations, addressing each section:I Have a Dream / Upside Down Exceptualism
Critique:
While the Founding Fathers were influenced by Age of Reason philosophers (like Locke and Montesquieu), the Constitution itself was a practical document born of political compromise, not a purely philosophical treatise.
Response 1: The use of the word “purely” shows a lack of objectivity. Philosophical precepts of ethics ought to permeate practical documents of government whenever that is possible. To say that it does not, is to say they did not try.
The idea of "horrible unexamined assumptions (precepts)" is a valid historical critique of the Founders' hypocrisy, particularly regarding slavery, but the argument simplifies complex social and economic motivations into a single psychological mechanism ("bi-polar actions").
Response 2: It's simpler to write off the founder’s actions as hypocrisy than claim each person plays different roles/archetypes. The people that are almost saintly in their treatment of others are those that do not have the opportunity. People are flawed.
It Starts
Factual Error: The quote, "a government of the people, for the people and by the people," is from Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address, not the Constitution or the period of its ratification.
Response 3: Yes, Lincoln’s public recitation of Cicero was after the Constitution. Those that studied philosophy in the period in between would know. The readers might not relate to the ancient Greeks.
Interpretation Critique (Montesquieu): Montesquieu's statement in The Spirit of the Laws that "sometimes slavery is necessary" is widely considered a use of satirical irony meant to expose the flimsy justifications used by those who practiced it. To claim it was a "precept" readily used by slave owners with confirmation bias misses the crucial point of Montesquieu's critique.
Response 4: The motivation of Montesquieu is immaterial. The actions of the colonists would not depend on any modern guess. Confirmation bias is real. If it helped their pre-held belief they would use it.
Haitian Soldiers
5) Factual/Chronological Error: The timeline for the French freeing and selling their control of Haiti is confused. While Haitian soldiers did fight at the Siege of Savannah (1779), the French National Convention abolished slavery in 1794, but Napoleon reinstated it in 1802. France sold the Louisiana territory, including the escaped Haitians, in 1803. These later events cannot be presented as a primary source of urgency for the Constitutional Convention, which concluded in 1787. The main urgency for the Convention was the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and domestic unrest like Shays' Rebellion.
Response 5: Perceived risks are motivating especially when the risk has a significant possibility of destroying your way of life. Ignoring this is equivalent to saying fear of the unknown did not exist.
It's Confusing
Critique: The description of Patrick Henry's opposition to the Constitution due to his suspicion of centralized power and theoretical government is accurate.
Response 6: People say what they want you to hear. Except for emotional actions there is always more than one reason that contributes to the overall decision.
The interpretation of authority being "upside down" (flowing from the people) is a core tenet of social contract theory; however, a professor would clarify that in American republicanism, this principle was filtered through the concept of delegated powers, which is why the institution of government (the whole, not the individual office-holder) came to be viewed as the repository of authority.
Response 7: It can be viewed that way. That view can be wrong. It's a very easy perspective for people with a military mindset. We agree it came to be viewed that way. And that is the problem because philosophers, especially zealous philosophers, would not let such an elegant solution be discarded over ignorance.
What if philosophers had won the day
Critique: This is a hypothetical section. The critique of Reconstruction would note that while the federal government may not have permanently usurped the "sovereignty" of the states (as the document claims), the historical reality is that Reconstruction did fail in achieving full equality, and the statement that it was "completed" is indeed a common simplification that obscures the violence, political resistance, and ultimate retreat by the federal government (culminating in the Compromise of 1877).
Response 8: I over-stated when I wrote permanently usurped.
What if philosophers never lost
Factual Error (11th Amendment): The claim that the 11th Amendment was passed because officials discovered that "all government sovereignty had been removed" is incorrect. The 11th Amendment (ratified in 1795) was a direct response to the 1793 Supreme Court decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, which allowed citizens of one state to sue another state in federal court. The amendment was passed to restore a degree of state sovereign immunity that the Founders believed they had preserved in the Constitution.
Response 9: No philosopher who understood what consent to govern means would be surprised that no government has sovereignty. Because the entire point is that sovereignty is with the persons and not the institutions. Who exactly are those “Founders” that did not understand?
Critique (Bill of Rights): The argument that the Bill of Rights would have become "annotations" is an interesting academic point, as James Madison initially argued they were unnecessary because the federal government only had delegated powers, so a list of prohibited actions was superfluous.
Response 10: It is not just academic. It's a crime of reckless disregard to not understand a perspective that makes Madison correct. Only after you find it, can it be objectively critiqued. The constitution is too important to fall into the trap of confirmation bias.
Dispelling Disinformation about Marbury v Madison
Critique (Jefferson/Madison): The document's argument over whether Jefferson "instructed" or "requested" Madison to withhold the commissions is a matter of semantic nuance rather than historical fact. The historical consensus is that the new administration took action (via Madison, the Secretary of State) to prevent the commissions from being delivered, which led to the case.
Response 11: It is not just semantics. When the authority flows up from bottom, the guy at the top does not get any unless you make him all powerful. The exact opposite of the point of the exercise.
Critique (Justice vs. Judge): The idea that the titles "Justice" (Supreme Court) and "Judge/Magistrate" were chosen "to obscure" commonality is speculative and not historically supported. The distinction reflects long-standing tradition and the specific appellate/constitutional review function of the Supreme Court.
Response 12: The vast majority of decision making history is undocumented. Mostly we just have the results. Today we are much better at profiling actions to catch criminals. The same techniques apply to everyone.
I was arguing the roles are supposed to be different enough to merit different names. At the moment the names were chosen there was no long standing history. We should not expect thoughtless choices.
Many to Many Relationships / Assignment Criteria / If the above is upheld in court
Critique: These sections abandon historical analysis in favor of applying contemporary database/organizational design terminology to propose a constitutional reform framework.
Response 13: Problem analysis is problem analysis. After the problem is solved, it should be checked to see if they could do it.
A history professor would generally dismiss this as anachronistic, noting that applying 21st-century technical and management concepts to 18th-century political philosophy removes the analysis from its proper historical context. The claims about the immediate real-world effects of this framework are speculative and beyond the scope of historical analysis.
Response 14: That attitude of dismissal is a huge problem. There was a way that the goals of the philosophers could be met, their slave owning institutions could be protected and that any logical person could find given time and motivation. But no one looked for it.
We agree that the analysis is beyond the scope of text based historical analysis.
Gemini would put this hypothetical professor into a silo. We can assume people are not the same as their work silo.
Historians like Gemini imitates will not be helpful. They are too set in their ways. Maybe Gemini is wrong.
In theory knowing the calculated odds does not conflict with precepts. So, they should aid when dealing with conflicts. If the reader prepares the odds, it's much better than it someone else it for them. When the conflict is only slight, merely updating the odds should also work.