The Constitution of the United States of America—that visionary, flexible, peculiar document which has steered the country for nearly 250 years—is getting ragged around the edges. Piles of precedent, let alone the widely divergent interpretations and applications of Articles and Amendments, both inform and inflame (and definitely slow down) the process of justice. Nothing in the Constitution makes Americans more logical, compassionate, or well-informed.

Besides all that, it’s a document created by European White Males of a privileged class to serve a raw confederation of some four million (in 1790) citizens along the East Coast of the continent–before the immorality of slavery was acknowledged; before the devastation of Native American peoples; before immigration transformed the mix of cultures throughout the country; before the divide between urban and rural dwellers, industry and agriculture, wealth and poverty with its intransigent consignment to “class” prevailed; before women were acknowledged as voting citizens. Even in its broad guidelines, the original document scarcely anticipated, let alone addressed, today’s issues and injustices.

SO LET’S BREAK THE WHOLE THING UP—PEACEFULLY

This was an idea tried before, as we all know. Except the issue was all wrong, and the defenders of an immoral economic model took up arms on behalf of evil.

I don’t believe it’s evil for people in California to consider their culture, their economic concerns, their immigration policies, and their demographics of social welfare completely different from those of New York. I don’t believe it’s evil for the people of North and South Dakota to feel that they should not be held to, say, wildlife management regulations applicable to Florida. In every region voters should feel closer to and more responsible for the concerns they share more or less locally, with inter-state (or international, as it were) negotiations as needed. After all, the Missouri River matters as much to Montana where it begins as to Missouri, where it dumps into the Mississippi. The consequences from upstream make a big difference all the way down.

I don’t believe it is rational any longer for a collection of centralized power-mongers, in disproportionate representation of their respective states with vastly different interests, to use invisible and self-serving financial resources to make law for the entire continent.

OF COURSE THIS ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN

For one thing, Sacred Cows can’t be murdered without violence.

For another thing, it’s hard to imagine which clusters of states as presently defined would choose to create a new nation together. I’m not sure I’d want current Missouri legislators to hold sway over even more hapless citizens, let alone in cahoots with Oklahoma.

I would like to see Canada and Mexico as fully cooperative members of a new United Nations of North America. But that doesn’t seem likely either, considering our respective histories.

Meanwhile, right now, the entire United States of America as presently constituted (or Constitutioned) must survive an enemy that answers to no legislation and falls to no military weaponry. The squabbles of the central powerhouse have created only chaos. No statistics tell the entire story. No prediction can be trusted.

What the Constitution may tell us after all is that we are a human community, citizens not only of a nation but also of a planet. Dividing ourselves up into smaller parts will not answer the fact that we are all responsible for everybody, with no possibility of independence.

Let’s just see to it that all voices are heard, that all lives matter, and that no person or power is above the law that guides us all. The Constitution is one version of that law. The greater law of every being and every tradition is: love other people, and treat other people as you want to be treated.

How simple is that??