Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
All in Constitution
As we prepare to celebrate Constitution Day, we should recall why the nation's founders feared democracy - and what we must do to reap its benefits and avoid its dangers.
Arguments against the1787 Constitution still show up today. Disagreements among modern-day Federalists and Anti-Federalists are healthy for democracy, as long as remain civil.
Candidates for president need to handle cognitively complex reasoning. How well they remember dates is a poor measure of that capability.
Too many assume that the “red” and “blue” divisions in American cannot be healed. We sell ourselves short.
Americans who prefer as president media celebrities and/or those with no experience in government take risks with their - and democracy’s - future.
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin gave the last speech. He urged delegates to be humble, judicious and virtuous in implementing the new government. That advice still matters.
When Supreme Court decisions are defied, we weaken the branch of government that is the only barrier against executive or legislative tyranny.
Despite recent calls for a “national divorce,” the United States is a contract ratified by the whole people not a compact of states. Honoring that matters in how we think and behave, as the Constitution’s framers knew.
The words “civility” and “compromise” don’t appear in the Constitution, but it can’t work without their prevalence in practice.
The United States is a government of laws, not men - but only if we understand why this matters and honor it in our behavior.
In our time, the Preamble to the Constitution gets scant attention. It wasn’t always that way - nor should it be now.
The framers of the Constitution didn’t invite everyone into the body politic, but their document has, over the course of American history, promoted a more inclusive society.
Both liberals and conservatives want to stock federal and state courts with partisan judges. This contradicts the desire of the Constitution’s framers and is dangerous to republican government.
Without morality in the people, the Constitution cannot work.
The nullification of federal laws is a dangerous tool which threatens our national union.
The Constitutional Convention in 1787 did not produce a perfect document. It is our job to continually improve the union of the states - and they gave us that challenge.
Public service is a calling, not just a job. The Oath of Office requires a moral commitment to the Constitution that is central to American government.
The framers of the Constitution left “God” out . Their goal was to allow religion to flourish as a way to build virtue and morality in citizens.
Slavish attention to constituents’ demands is not what the Constitution's framers wanted.
Our reverence for the U.S. Constitution is understandable. But, like all living things, it is subject to disease and mortality. George Washington warned us to be careful.
