Today [September 17] is Constitution Day in America. The federal holiday (technically Constitution Day and Citizenship Day) commemorates the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. The 2004 law that established it requires all taxpayer-funded educational institutions to provide lessons on the Constitution on that day.

However, learning cannot be legislated into existence. Two decades later, the Constitution is as misunderstood by the American public as ever. The education establishment bears a big part of the blame for this plight. But another culprit is mainstream media.

Political Football or Romantic Relic?

Journalists, pundits, and politicians treat the Constitution as little more than a political football. In newspapers, on news shows, and online, the overriding concern is whether and how the document can be leveraged to advance the policy agenda of one political faction or another.

Constitutional scholars and educators are more often “above the fray.” But their treatment of the Constitution just breeds public misunderstanding in a different way. In classrooms, textbooks, museum exhibits, documentaries, and mass-market history books, discussions of the meaning of the Constitution are usually either vague or wrong. The “Constitution education complex” reveres the document as a national treasure and commemorates its framing, signing, and ratification as the triumphant conclusion of the Revolution and the Founding: America’s epic origin story. But it glosses over so much that even today’s Constitution-loving patriots perceive the piece of parchment as little more than a romantic relic.

What both the education establishment and mainstream media almost always omit from their discussions of the Constitution is a clear and correct explanation of its philosophy. It is necessary to understand the Constitution as a work of philosophy in order to correctly interpret what it says as the law of the land and fully appreciate why it is a national treasure. Without that grounding, journalistic discourse is doomed to devolve into “political football” bickering, and scholarly explorations are bound to meander into “romantic relic” territory.

A Philosophy Made Manifest

How is the Constitution a “work of philosophy”? The Constitution is an expression (however imperfect) of the founding philosophy of America: a set of strong convictions held not only by America’s leading revolutionaries and founding fathers, but by the nation’s revolutionary and founding generation. Ayn Rand and Leonard E. Read referred to that philosophy as “Americanism,” and it was the spirit that animated both the Revolution and the Founding.

As C. Bradley Thompson wrote in his book America’s Revolutionary Mind, citing Abraham Lincoln:

“[T]he Constitution and the Union were just the political and constitutional expressions of a deeper moral principle—“the principle of ‘Liberty to all,’” which in turn was housed in the Declaration of Independence.”

And the Declaration of Independence in turn was, as Thompson argued, an expression of the prevailing political philosophy of Revolutionary America. As Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s chief author, reflected in 1825, the goal of the Declaration was

“…not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject…neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind…” [Emphasis added]

And the American mind’s political convictions were, in turn, shaped by the ideas of the English philosopher John Locke, especially as articulated in Locke’s 1689 work Two Treatises of Government.

As Thompson wrote:

“America’s revolutionary mind was an expression of Locke’s political philosophy.”

This may seem like a sweeping claim, but Thompson backed it up extensively:

“As shown throughout this book, an exhaustive examination of the pamphlet and newspaper literature of the period demonstrates that American revolutionaries were unadulterated Lockeans…”

“In fact, it was rare for a newspaper article or pamphlet written on the debates over the imperial crisis between 1764 and 1776 not to mention, quote, or paraphrase Locke.”

As Thompson concluded:

“Locke’s reasoning and intellectual hegemony over the American revolutionary mind was as thoroughgoing as Karl Marx’s was over the minds of the Russian revolutionaries—indeed, possibly even more so. By 1776, the American revolutionaries might very well have said, ‘We are all Lockeans now.'”

Thus, a great deal of the contents of America’s founding documents, the actions of the American revolutionaries, and the objectives of the American founders can be traced directly to specific doctrines explained in specific passages of Locke’s Treatises.

To understand the Constitution (as well as all that led up to it), one must understand the political philosophy of John Locke.

Lockean Objectives

Take the Constitution’s famous Preamble, for example:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This single sentence is chock-full of Lockean presumptions. The invocation of “We the People” is a reference to the Lockean principles of popular sovereignty and consent of the governed. These doctrines were based on Locke’s origin story of government. He explained legitimate, non-tyrannical government as the result of a consensual agreement among individuals to obey commonly observed laws created and enforced by a common government.

According to Locke, the people were ultimately sovereign: they had the power. A legitimate government was created when they voluntarily and provisionally delegated some of that power to an agency of their own creation. As Locke wrote in his Treatises:

“[T]he governments of the world, that were begun in peace, had their beginning laid on that foundation, and were made by the consent of the people.”

The principle of popular sovereignty is also the philosophical underpinning of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which states:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” [Emphasis added.]

The Declaration of Independence also demonstrated its Lockean provenance when it proclaimed that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

This brings us to the matter of why people institute and delegate power to governments. According to Locke, the sole purpose for which people form legitimate governments is to secure the rights of the governed, i.e., the sovereign people. As the Declaration pithily put it: “[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” This is known as the principle of limited government.

And what are the rights that governments are instituted to secure? According to the Declaration, “among these [rights] are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is important to note that the words “among these” indicates that the Declaration’s authors were not claiming that this threefold enumeration was a thorough one.

In the Lockean philosophical framework, all rights ultimately boil down to rightful ownership: ownership of one’s own body (i.e., “the right to self-ownership”) and ownership of justly acquired external possessions (i.e., “the right to property”). (For further explanation of this, see my essay “What Are Rights? This Is What the American Founders Believed.”)

How are such rights typically violated?

First of all, there are the depredations of common criminals. Those who commit murder, assault, kidnapping, rape, and/or extortion violate their victims’ self-ownership rights. And those who commit theft, burglary, robbery, trespass, vandalism, or fraud violate their victims’ property rights.

Secondly, there are the rights violations committed by foreign aggressors. When foreign governments, organizations, or individuals perpetrate bombing campaigns, terrorist attacks, and/or invasions that harm innocent victims, they violate the rights of those victims.

A third category includes paramilitary groups and other domestic gangs that seek not just plunder, but power.

These are some of the most significant categories of rights violators. And again, according to the Lockean political philosophy that the founders subscribed to, the sole job of government is to protect the government from such rights violators.

This analysis helps us understand the rest of the Constitution’s Preamble, which states that the purpose for which “We the People” were ordaining and instituting a Constitution was to create a better government (“a more perfect union”). And what would make that government better than the one that preceded it—the one instituted by the Articles of Confederation? According to the Preamble, the new government would be better if it did a better job at the following jobs: “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence…”

Based on the Lockean analysis provided above, we can now understand that all three of these jobs are all variations of government’s one job: securing the rights of the governed. To “establish Justice” is to secure rights from common criminals. To “provide for the common defence” is to secure rights from foreign aggressors. And “to insure domestic Tranquility” is to secure rights from insurrections and civil wars perpetrated by power-seeking factions.

The Preamble also says the new government should “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” which is self-evidently about securing rights.

The part in the Preamble about promoting “the general Welfare” is often interpreted as providing for a government that did more than protect rights. But again, the framers were Lockeans, and Locke’s discussion of a government that promoted the common good of society was in the context of the understanding that the way governments promote the general Welfare (as distinct from favoritism to specific individuals and interest groups) was by securing the rights of all. James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution, explicitly stated that the Constitution’s references to “the general Welfare” were not intended as a justification for an interventionist government.

Lockean Provisions

After the Preamble comes the original “articles” of the Constitution that established the basic structure of the new government, including its powers and limitations. As Thompson wrote in his essay “The Laissez-Faire Constitution”:

“Article I highlights the forms and formalities of the Legislative branch (i.e., Congress). Article II outlines the forms and formalities of the Executive Branch (i.e., the President). And Article III details the forms and formalities of the Judicial Branch (i.e., the Supreme Court).”

As dry and technical as these and the subsequent articles of the Constitution may seem, they too had a philosophical basis.

First of all, there is the assumption that the function of each of these branches was to take part in pursuing the sole purpose of government as expressed in the Preamble: securing the rights of the people. The laws created by the legislature, enforced by the executive, and interpreted by the judiciary should all be about securing rights, according to the framers’ Lockean principles.

Secondly, Locke and the framers recognized that a fourth ever-present threat to the rights of a people was posed by that people’s government itself. A government can become corrupted by power and, for its own aggrandizement, start violating the very rights it was instituted to secure. Such a government was termed by Locke and the American founders as a tyranny. Indeed, the founders had just led a Revolutionary War to protect the rights of Americans from Great Britain, which they considered to have become a tyranny. The justification of that Revolution was articulated in the Declaration of Independence (“whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”) and informed by the provisions in Locke’s Treatises for the “dissolution” of tyrannical governments.

The framers of the Constitution did not want the new government they were creating to become tyrannical either. So they tried to guard against that by structuring it in a way that limited its power and thus reduced the likelihood that it would be corrupted by power. They did so by creating “checks and balances” in the Constitution: between branches of the federal government as well as between the federal government and the state governments. This was inspired by the principle of “the separation of powers” posited by Locke and developed by Baron de Montesquieu (another major influence on the framers).

And of course the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments to the Constitution) was also steeped in Locke. It was added to the Constitution as a safeguard against the new government passing tyrannical, rights-violating laws. And the rights it enumerated can all be traced to the rights of self-ownership and property implicit in Lockean political philosophy. The rights recognized by the First Amendment (freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition) are derived from our self-ownership rights: our ownership of our minds and bodily means of communication. And the right to be secure in one’s ownership of one’s guns, home, and “effects” as recognized by the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments are derived from our property rights.

Returning to Our Revolution

Nothing human is perfect. The Constitution wasn’t completely true to Americanism/Lockeanism. And Americanism/Lockeanism itself contained political, ethical, and logical errors. But that philosophy (which, by the way, is basically the same as what today is most usually called libertarianism) is undoubtedly the best one that a people has ever tried to politically implement. And much of the virtue and prosperity of America can be traced to that implementation as expressed in the US Constitution.

However, the actual implementation of a philosophy cannot rely on text alone. For a philosophy to actually influence the course of human events, there must be, among the more thoughtful minds of a people, an understanding and embrace of the philosophy that inspired that text. That was true of the founding generation, but it is no longer true for Americans today.

The Constitution will continue to be a political football, a romantic relic, a dead letter, and even an enabler of tyranny until the revolutionary ideas that framed it once again come alive in the hearts and minds of the American people.

This article was originally featured at the Foundation for Economic Education and is republished with permission of author.