September 1987
American Purpose
Issue 7, Volume 1

Publication Date: September 1, 1987
Posted: Tuesday, September 9, 1987

This issue includes 'America and the World: A Bicentennial Reflection'.


In This Issue :

America and the World2
A Bicentennial Reflection
The bicentennial of the Constitution of the United States affords us the opportunity to reflect on many things: the "miracle at Philadelphia" by which thirteen squabbling mini-states managed to forge agreement on an instrument of national governance; the fact that the instrument created during that muggy Philadelphia summer has stood the test of two centuries and is now the world's oldest constitution; the ongoing, and often rancorous, debates over what the Framers intended and what that might mean in modern circumstances. The tone that has been set for the constitutional bicentennial is, properly, one of gratitude; the Framers indeed "built better than they knew," as John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop of the United States, once put it.  [More]