'What the Constitution Means to Me': Is the Founders' masterpiece foundering?
Claire Wilcher plays a contestant pleased with her Constitutional savvy. The two founding documents of this country used to occupy different places in my estimation. As a young student, the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence swayed me more (though I once had to sit down in a classroom spelling bee for rendering "of" as "o-v," mindlessly hearing the word's sound of "f" in my junior-high head). Later, the exaggeration in the document's complaints against the Crown turned me off: such a ton of special pleading. "A decent respect for the opinions of mankind"? Oh, come on! More like a scorned elite's justification of rebellion on steroids. In college, the Constitution gained stature with me because it avoids rhetorical flourishes, and I'm so pleased it never mentions God as the guarantor of any of our government's structures or the people's rights. (Are you paying attention, Christian Nationalists?) And then there a