Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Charles Jarvis

  • Constitution Sunday: Charles Jarvis Supports Hancock’s Strategy on Amendments

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    February 4, 1788

    Building consensus is a challenge. In the United States Congress, consensus has always been difficult to build because of the diversity—geographic and otherwise—of its Representatives and Senators, given their assigned districts and states. But when the Constitution was being debated, the stakes were as high as they have been in American history: consensus was needed not for some legislation, small or large, but for reworking the structure of the states’ and federal government and putting the country on a new, bolder trajectory. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, Charles Jarvis articulated his support for the draft Constitution—recognizing its merits—but only if the Constitution was passed with the amendments.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Charles Jarvis on the Amendment Procedure: An Irrefutable Argument for Ratification

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 30, 1788

    Revolutions, civil wars, and coups haunt leaders of all types of governments. The very prospect of these events conjures awful images, and every leader searches for ways to prevent and mitigate them. For some, tamping down dissent with force and papering over the people’s differences through campaigns of nationalism are not only sufficient but necessary to maintain the status quo. For others, democracies, there must be some tailoring of the government’s contours to the people; even as generations pass, morals change, and principles transform.

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