By Ray Smock Senator Robert C. Byrd launched the Byrd Center’s annual Constitution Day Address nine years ago. The lecture series is named in honor of the late Tom E. Moses, a decorated veteran of World War II and a lifelong advocate of civil rights and human rights. In his inaugural speech in this series, Senator Byrd said, “Not a day has passed in the history of this great republic in which the Constitution has not been important.” This thought was on my mind as I drafted this year’s Constitution Day address. I could not help but be drawn to current events which reflect a growing constitutional crisis—one that may come to pass within weeks of Constitution Day, where Congress may actually shut down the government because a faction in the House is so opposed to the Affordable Healthcare Act and equally opposed to increasing the debt limit of the United States. Our Constitution has become absentee, elusive, and distant as these events unfold. Nothing in the Constitution gives one branch of government the power to shut down the government or to default on the faith and credit of the United States. Yet pundits on TV and on the Internet debate ad nauseum the prospect of a government shutdown as if it is just the latest installment in the ongoing soap opera of Congress as entertainment not as government. I am a historian not a crystal-ball gazer and I do not pretend to know what will happen in the next few weeks or months that might break the gridlock and hyper-partisanship on display in Congress. To try to make some sense of this unfolding constitutional crisis, I looked back on something a poet said to Congress on its 200th anniversary in 1989. Here is my Constitution Day address. The address will also air on American History TV on C-SPAN3 on the following dates:
Sunday October 13 9:55 am ET Saturday October 19 4:55 pm ET Comments are closed.
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