Why the constitution remains as relevant as Washington’s chair

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

PHILADELPHIA – According to the tour guides at Independence Hall, ninety percent of the building and its contents are original. Most of the furniture, though, is “of the era” and wasn’t necessarily inside the building when the founding fathers gathered to declare the independence of a new American nation, or later when they gathered to draft the constitution.

The Chair

There is one exception, George Washington’s chair. It presides over the room, more than likely in the same spot where Washington sat presiding over the constitutional convention in 1787. We know this because of the detail at the center of the crest rail, a carving of a half sun with emanating rays. James Madison is quoted as saying he heard Benjamin Franklin comment on the sun – “I have often looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now I… know that it is a rising…sun.”

Tourists love that, it’s a good story and it connects them to the founding myth. Because if there’s a lesson to be taken from visiting Independence Hall it’s that the story we’ve been told in our history books is just that, a story. We know what happened from the accounts and diaries of the men who were there. We know that the vote to declare independence happened on July 2^nd, but the document itself was signed on the 4^th. All these years we’ve been shooting celebratory fireworks two days late. We also know that the Liberty Bell was not rung on the 4^th, or the 2^nd. The bell didn’t peal for liberty at all, yet we call it the Liberty Bell, crack and all.

A malleable document

So we know what happened at Independence Hall and we know what the men gathered there were thinking because they wrote it all down. Think of those things as Washington’s chair, the things we know for sure. Everything else is a close approximation. [pullquote]For more than 200 years we’ve been stretching and folding and the constitution they wrote to suit the furniture of the day. [/pullquote]For more than 200 years we’ve been stretching and folding and the constitution they wrote to suit the furniture of the day. We take the words they agreed upon and make mental tweaks. The fact that they wrote that all men are created equal is now meant to mean that all persons, men and women alike, from every race and ethnicity, are created equal. That’s the furniture we prefer, because if we didn’t only White, male landowners would be equal – I have nothing against White, male landowners, especially the ones who gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 and 1787, they left us a good piece of writing to build a nation.

But isn’t malleability the strength of that writing?

Tired, cranky men with quills

We take the challenges and questions of the present day and hold them up to the scrutiny of what the founders left us: same-sex marriage, immigration, healthcare, the powers of the executive …

You can’t help but understand, standing in the middle of that small, old hall, that when George Washington sat at the very chair you’re looking at, when the room was filled with tired, cranky men, arguing over the ideals of a new nation, they were working from what they knew, applying their knowledge and experience to quill and parchment. They did such a good job that we continue to do that today.

Their idea was to forge a new nation – which is what Ben Franklin saw on the crest rail. And if you go there today you’ll see that the sun on George’s chair is still rising. It leaves you quiet, and with a deep sense of responsibility.