The Original American Constitution & Elitism

The original American constitution created a government and private sector elite in which the wealthy and the highly positioned in government (often the same white men) work together to both achieve their goals and to maintain their private wealth and political power. "Most leaders" of the Convention, as Welch writes, were desirous of a new constitution which would empower the government to guide the nation's economic expansion; they "envisioned a commercial empire [and] considered the government too weak to give rise to such an empire" (Welch 26). From the beginning, then, the creators of the Constitution sought a strong government which would feature a close link between government power and commercial profit, a government which would be at least as sympathetic to the exercise of capitalism by the wealthy white man in the slavery-dependent mansion as it was to the exercise of free speech by the common white man in the street. This report examines three texts to discover evidence of this elitist, governmental/business connection in the creation of the Constitution, including consideration of the definition of elitism, how the creators of the Constitution embodied elitism, how the electoral process was rigged to favor those with wealth and power, and how the "debates" over the Constitution were not about freedom or democracy but about competing elites wanting to protect their power, as in the case of the compromise involving slavery, which had nothing to do with slavery and

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and taxes" (Welch et al. 36). Welch says that there is debate over whether the Constitution was shaped most by philosophical, political, or economic considerations, then adds that "the influences . . . reinforce each other" (Welch et al. 36). In other words, the various interests of the elites came together to shape the Constitution so that all those interests were satisfied. Once it is thus established that rich, white males are in charge of making the laws, that both Representatives and Senators will be rich, white men, that women and blacks are excluded from the electoral process, it is clear that the elites at the top have little to decide except for compromises which mutually protect conflicting interests. Debates involving the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism were all debates focusing on how competing elitist groups could compromise to protect their wealth and power. There is much irony in these debates, as when Brutus in one Anti-Federalist paper argues against a strong central government on the basis of protecting the people from "ambitious and designing men" (Miroff 29), when, in fact, all of the elitist, wealthy, white, male debaters--federalists and anti-federalists alike--were ambitious and d

Category: Government - T