Why There Were No Academics at the Constitutional Convention

Now I have been in and out of the Academy for over fifty years. I always go back to the real world. Now to the Constitution. The NY Times had a piece on what needed to be changed in the Constitution.The respondents were all academics of some sort. Perhaps that is why the folks who wrote the Constitution had none there in Philadelphia.

One must read some of their comments. One might possibly be quite disturbed if they ever let these people loose upon humanity while implementing their ideas. There were in my opinion no Lockes, no Montisques, no Humes, not even a Burke. Perhaps that is why we have so large an Academy. It is a place to keep them all, like say prisons. A bit more costly but they get to hang around with each other and reinforce their ideas.

The folks in the halls in Philly had jobs. They were merchants, bankers, farmers, builders. The had a modicum of understanding of what life is really like. They were not the sheltered few.

It terrifies me from time to time to see these folks opine without substance. But so far they do so only in the Times. Safe for a while.