Balance: The Low Carb Donut

Everyone at MKA knows of the Step team. At any event, be it the Gathering or a sport event, it is an eagerly anticipated and watched group. Why? Simple. It is a group of people working together in unison. Everything they do as a group is balanced. They balance on one foot and tap their other shoe together. They split into two groups, four, and then back again having already choreographed and compromised. Their performance is an exhibit of when something is in balance, or unison. In our day to day lives you hardly ever see that. Whether that is a comment on our eye sight or our society, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

On the radio it isn’t uncommon to hear advertisements say “America Runs on Dunkin’ (Donuts)” in a nice little jingle that gets stuck in one’s head. Some might agree, but personally I prefer, ‘America Runs on Balance’. It has less of a ring to it, but it has more truth -- simply look to the history of the Constitution if you disagree.

In the beginning, there was fear. Fear set apart those who preferred to wait and watch American events and those, like George Washington, who finally made the Decision to join the Constitutional Convention. George Washington’s fear after Shay’s Rebellion was that “mankind when left to themselves are unfit for their own Government” and that what America’s “trans-Atlantic foe has predicted” would come true (Letter from George Washington to Henry Lee, October 31, 1786). Only after the fear had set in did the Constitutional Convention get started, and for that matter, only after a national celebrity, George Washington, admitted his fear. The fear was like a match starting off a stick of dynamite. After the dynamite blew up half a hill, one could start to see the diamonds hidden in the rough. In this case, the diamonds were the Constitution and the dynamite was any and all compromises of the Convention.

Similar to modern times, the successes of the Constitutional Convention was defined by its compromises. The Constitutional Convention started off in unison on two things: George Washington would chair the convention and that everything concerning the meetings would be closed to the public. Then, ironically for this piece, they quickly agreed that each delegation would have a single vote and even the major events wouldn’t require a unanimous vote, merely a majority. Since humans are different and will always disagree, this immediately balanced unanimity with productivity. After this there was the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan was all about balancing the powers, starting off by saying that “a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme Legislative, Executive and Judiciary” (Brinkley, pg 144). This part was quickly approved. The problem occurred on how states would be represented in the new government. The New Jersey Plan suggested that there should be only one house with equal representation for every state despite the size of the state. The New Jersey Plan was rejected, but it brought rise to a compromise. The compromise said that members of the upper house could be elected by the state governments. One of the major debates of the Convention was over slavery. The slave-dependent states wanted slaves to count as population and property, but the slave-independent states wanted slaves to count only for property purposes (and therefore for taxes). After a lot of debate and the Convention was almost dissolved, again the Convention jumped over a hurdle by created a compromise by balancing the two extreme opinions. They did this by counting slaves as three fifths of a free person and of a piece of property. A compromise between powers was also reached by banning the government from stopping the slave trade, or as a result, even talking about it for twenty years.

This, finally in the long list of major compromises, brought the conversation to the balance of power and limitations. If the scale of power wasn’t level on average, then America would collapse. If the scale of power was level, then it would be a testament to the world. The Convention agreed that the purpose of the Constitution was to create the Supreme law, but not the Supreme man. The people would give power to the constitution which would then give power to the government, which, in turn, would give power to the people via the social contract of Locke and Hobbes. To cement this, every branch of government had “checks and balances” which kept any one branch from having too much power and thus becoming tyrannical. The Constitutional Convention originally wanted to limit power so that there wouldn’t be too little liberty, but men like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton feared too much liberty. After the Sheys’ Rebellion, like a number of the people who joined the Convention after the Rebellion, began to fear what happened when the liberty itself of the people was unchecked. To solve this issue, the president was set to be elected by an electoral college and thus made the government not of the people, but of the chosen people.

These compromises and balances of power, people and beliefs are what keeps America on the thick and narrow. When things get unbalanced, people notice. Due to the nature of human kind, the masses never agree on what they notice, merely that something was messed up. When someone on the step team hesitates or messes up, people notice. A sort of feeling circulates around the flood of bodies as one neighbor whispers inaudibly to the next and then continues to fixedly watch the performance. For one second, the unison was broken. For one second the balance was uneven. For that one second, they were again watching the human nature they see in their day to day life. Today, when congress doesn’t work together and certain parties are at vicious odds apposed to complementary sides of a scale, the nation notices and complains.

The interpretation of the Constitution is constantly changing. For example, during the Founding Fathers’ times, guns were a necessity of life for hunting. For a large majority of the nation, if one didn’t have farm animals, trapping or a gun was the only way to get a supply of meat. Today, hunting is more of a culture than a necessity. In America, one can simply go to the grocery store if they were simply hungry. Over time, society has changed. In this debate in particular, their are two extreme views on this right in the Bill of Rights. Some think people should view the constitution strictly as to what the Founding Fathers wrote or view the constitution liberally in what the Founding Fathers meant and bending how it applies to new times (and social demands) as needed. Why is it that we even have this debate, to read the vague constitution strictly or liberally? Why is it that we today, as an American community, do not trust ourselves to grapple with the constitution and change it as needed now, instead of looking back to the founding fathers of then? What is it they have that we don’t? Simply, the Founding Fathers were human and we are human and thus both parties are flawed. We are flawed; our ideas are flawed; and our actions are flawed. Eventually all of the flaws even out, but as humans we question flaws and thus we question everything, whether or not we should. We look back to the Founding Fathers because the difference between them and us it that they had experienced recent tyranny, had more compromise (in their system) and had an absolute need and conviction to create the Constitution. If modern Americans were trying to redo the constitution, they would not be able to get the same protection against tyranny because they had not experienced the same dilemmas. The Founding Fathers created the Constitution with the intent of keeping America free from tyranny in the future generations, but is it possible for any man to truly prepare for the future? If there is any tool that can be used to create a valid plan for the future, it is compromise. And if there's compromise, there thus will be balance. Last time I checked, donuts aren't nearly as useful.


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