Monument to constitution should honor document

Letter written January 4, 2010 to Allegany County Commissioners. Published January 10 in Cumberland Times-News.

Dear Sirs:

Thank you for (assistant county attorney) Barry Lavine’s prompt response to my December 21 letter to you. I appreciate the chance to see the proposed Constitution monument inscription in full, and to read Mr. Lavine’s rationale for its acceptance.

Sadly, Mr. Lavine overlooks the obvious: “The meaning conveyed by a monument is generally not a simple one like ‘Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,’” writes Justice Samuel Alito in the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum (February 25, 2009).

The proposed inscription, innocuous as it may seem to Mr. Lavine (and it contains two typos in the Preamble), is a commentary, a viewpoint, an interpretation by one group that has a right, under the Constitution, to take a slant on that document. However, as ruled by the Supreme Court, one group does not have the right to present their slant, as a foregone conclusion for everyone, on a public monument.

Our society’s Judeo-Christian grounding is the philosophical “backbone of our country.” God endows the rights and dignities ensured by the Constitution. The Constitution generated from our forefathers’ gratitude for God’s graces, to establish a framework to order our society toward a balance that keeps the people free from tyranny.

A monument is a sort of fine art object, intended to inspire us and bring us to pause and reflect, in a personal or communal way, on matters of individual or social significance. A monument to the Constitution, then, should lift viewers’ minds and hearts to ponder the document’s significance, not draw us into one viewpoint.

Therefore, I urge you to reconsider the inscription for a monument to the Constitution. I ask you to choose one that presents facts about the document’s genesis, rather than a viewpoint, along with the Preamble:

The United States Constitution

“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.”

Drafted by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, the United States Constitution joined thirteen states under one government and established a framework for the nation’s growth and stability.

At Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, after a summer of study and debate in a convention presided by General George Washington, and eleven years after the Revolution won under General Washington’s leadership, fifty-five delegates signed the United States Constitution.

“Having conducted these states to independence and peace,
he now appears to assist in framing a Government to make the People happy.”
-- William Pierce of Georgia, about General George Washington,
from Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention

A committee is in place to review proposals. The board of commissioners has final say on how such a project should take form. Please consider my proposal.

I hope this note finds you well and in agreement, that such an important project as a monument to the Constitution on the courthouse lawn deserves great deliberation.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Thoerig

Public monument no place for opinion

Published in Cumberland Times-News Thursday, October 1, 2009.

"Our local leaders will do best to reject any inscription, other
than a quote from the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers’ legacy -- not Jeffrey Davis’ wish -- echoes through the ages."

To the Editor:

The county commissioners and their monument committee do well to reject Jeffrey Davis’ (and his Citizens for a Secular Government’s) viewpoint, as an inscription for a courthouse lawn tribute to the U.S. Constitution. As Justice Samuel Alito summarizes (Pleasant Grove City, Utah vs. Summum), a public monument is no place to post a personal opinion.

Our local leaders will do best to reject any inscription, other than a quote from the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers’ legacy -- not Jeffrey Davis’ wish -- echoes through the ages.

Signed Sept. 17, 1788, the U.S. Constitution united 13 states into one nation and established a framework for growth and stability. Over the summer months, at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, 55 educated and distinguished patriots, men of influence and integrity, esteemed lawyers, judges, governors, theologians, military officers, merchants from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, deliberated and debated and negotiated.

General George Washington chaired the convention. Gouverneur Morris penned the document. Benjamin Franklin, 82, was the eldest delegate; Jonathan Dayton, 26, the youngest.

William Pierce, delegate from Georgia, says of General Washington, in his Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention (Library of Congress): “Having conducted these states to independence and peace, he now appears to assist in framing a Government to make the People happy.”

In their Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution (U.S. Army Center for Military History), Robert Wright and Morris MacGregory say that, as a soldier and member of the Continental Congress, Gouverneur Morris was “convinced” that “a strong central government was needed” to preserve liberties and expand opportunities won in the Revolution: “In an age when most (early Americans) still thought of themselves as citizens of their sovereign and separate states, Morris was able to articulate a clear vision of a new and powerful union.”

Facing opposition that seemed likely at times to extinguish the assembly’s efforts, Washington placed his trust in God. In an Aug. 31, 1788 letter to Annis Boudinot Stockton (University of Virginia) -- a Revolutionary War patriot in her own right and widow of Richard Stockton, Declaration of Independence signer and Continental Congress delegate -- Washington expresses his awe and gratitude for the graces and great gift bestowed upon our nation by the benevolent Being: “I can never trace the (interconnection) of causes, which led to these events, without acknowledging the mystery and admiring the goodness of Providence. To that superintending Power alone is our retraction from the brink of ruin to be attributed. A spirit of accommodation was happily infused into the leading characters of the Continent…for the reception of a good government.”

Of Gouverneur Morris -- graduated from King’s College (named Columbia University in 1784) and buried at St. Anne’s Episcopal Churchyard in the Bronx -- Wright and MacGregory say: “During the Convention debates, he defended ideas that had been associated with him ever since he had helped write the New York constitution in 1776: religious liberty, opposition to slavery, the right of property as the foundation of society, the rule of law, and the consent of the governed as the basis of government. His aims were ambitious and reflected his vision of a government that would serve as an example to the rest of the world.”

Especially now, as efforts seem under way to circumvent the framework of our Constitution and to deny its source and sense, if a monument is to be erected in its honor, then we must urge our commissioners to accept only a quote from the Constitution, to enshrine the inspired vision of our faithful forefathers -- not the skewed view of Jeffrey Davis.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

copyright Sept. 25, 2009, Nancy E. Thoerig