The Constitutions Greatest Enemy
[Music]
we the people
these three words encompass the very
roots
of our blessed country our founding
fathers
put aside their personal differences and
spent the long summer
of 1787 meticulously crafting a document
that would establish a country where the
people have the power to make their
voices heard
however during this same time many
people were
criticizing the american experiment of
giving the people this much power
stating that it would cause these things
called
factions now what is the faction you
guys may be asking
well james madison defines faction in
fabulous tent as
a number of people whether amounting to
a majority
or minority of the whole who are united
and
actuated by some common impulse of
passion
or of interest adverse to the rights of
other citizens
or to the permanent and aggregate
interest of the community as a whole
my history teacher once dubbed it as the
constitution’s greatest enemy
now when i first heard this in history
class i had the same reaction as you
guys
the constitution’s greatest enemy
that sounds a little extreme right but
imagine
a faction is an interest group with the
intent of limiting another group of
people
and this inherently threatens the entire
american system
as the whole purpose of the revolution
was to establish a government
that represents all people not just some
people
if a faction can use democracy to get
into power
then our system truly is no better
than a tyranny or a monarchy
this moment sparked my interest into
politics
it moved me to conduct research on
factions
i could not comprehend the possibility
of our founding fathers
just leaving us with the constitution’s
greatest enemy
but thankfully i did not have to
our founding fathers were in fact
cognizant of this risk
and molded the constitution in such a
way to prevent these factions from
rising
for example our founding fathers
established our government
under the principle ideology of
federalism where the overall federal
government
has power over the smaller state
governments
and each state government has power over
the local governments respectively
with this setup it gives the people the
power to suppress
and limit factions to the local level
and not allow them to make its way up to
the national government
our founding fathers tried so hard to
make sure
that a bitter partisan environment would
not occur
and that adverse factions would not try
to oppress one another
in fact when george washington gave his
farewell
address he specifically advised our
country
to not form political parties and fall
into this factionalism
where groups of people are pitted
against one another
however even washington was unable to
stop factions
and just as they left power the
federalists
sent in the northeastern states were
pitted against the southern
agricultural democratic republicans
all of their hard work
wasted this is particularly evident
during the build-up towards the civil
war
as well as post-war conflict our country
built under the principal ideologies of
freedom
and unity got so corrupted by violent
factions
that we became in serious danger of
collapse
as the southern states attempt to secede
from the union
and form their own confederate states of
america
this civil war embodied the dangers of
factions
groups of people who are so unwilling to
compromise with one another
that they are willing to tear our
country apart
and today i feel like we are facing a
similar problem
see i’m extremely passionate about
politics for as long as i can remember
i have dreamed about a career based on
improving the lives of the people i
serve so you get a taste of this field i
incurred at a local campaign running
in a nonpartisan election and while it
was a great experience
i was shocked at the level of challenges
i faced
see in the election a white man was
running against an indian-american man
and i chose to work for the white man
and this
surprisingly bothered a lot of people
some doors answered with anger and
mistrust
for a colored person like me trying to
get involved in politics
his opponents tried to label him as
someone who was
unamerican because he hired me to be on
his campaign
on the other hand his opponents on the
other side
tried to label him as a racist and a
white supremacist
just because his skin color was white
see the two factions both wanted to win
so
badly that they resulted to dirty
politics to try to divide
us and completely left out the issues
that mattered most to my community
and that right there truly
made me question my faith in the
political process
of this country
now i am not advocating for getting
rid of our political parties i know that
is a lost cause
but that does not mean that we have to
allow them to become
factions you see the key thing about
factions that is so scary
is that they are adverse to the rights
of other citizens
and have the intent to harm one another
if we allow our political parties to
become like that
then yes we are in huge trouble
but i firmly believe that political
parties
and a positive and united atmosphere can
co-exist as long as politicians
make the effort to reach across the
aisle
now you guys may be thinking look ashwin
we are just ordinary citizens
some of us cannot even vote yet
we cannot fix this this sounds
more like a government problem but in
the end
aren’t our politicians just
representatives of ourselves
this culture in washington isn’t it just
a rendition
of the culture in our dinner tables
you see they’re only acting like this
because we the people are acting like
this in our daily lives
the change has to start with us and only
then will it trickle up
to our policy makers
we need to first read the constitution
and appreciate
the powers our founding fathers gave us
you know a recent study conducted by
marquette university
found that a staggering 57
of americans have never read the
constitution
how in the world are we supposed to use
our powers guaranteed to us
by the constitution if we do not even
know
what they are but it’s not enough to
just learn
we must also act let’s discuss politics
with our local neighbors
instead of dismissing the opinion of
somebody we disagree with
let’s hear them out and truly understand
where they’re coming from
now don’t get me wrong let’s have our
passionate opinions on issues
but at the same time let’s make sure to
acknowledge
that those on the other side are in fact
well intentioned
share our values and want to see the
same
problems fixed let’s
finally understand that while we may be
driving different cars
we all want to get to the same end point
now i know that this is not going to be
easy
i currently run a club at briarwood’s
high school called the briarwoods
political union
our goal is to create an environment
where our fellow classmates
feel free to voice their political
opinions
and empowered to become civically
engaged
and i will be the first to admit that
sometimes
discussions do get heated and sometimes
we are not able to find common ground
but whether we like it or not we
need to engage in those difficult
conversations with one another
our generation especially has to rise to
this occasion
we are inheriting the world’s major
problems
things like climate change gun violence
and the growing national debt if we
want to have any chance of fixing these
problems
we cannot just run away to our echo
chambers on social media
whenever things become difficult
now we need to be braver than that
we need to seek those who may disagree
with us and embrace
those arduous conversations
as cliche as it may sound simple acts
like these
can truly stop our political parties
from turning
into those violent factions it can
reinvigorate that culture
our founding fathers want it for so long
a positive passionate
and understanding political atmosphere
and so my fellow americans my fellow
teenagers
as john f kennedy once said ask
not what your country can do for you
ask what you can do for your country
we have an election coming up let’s go
and make our voices heard
we the people have the power to defeat
the constitution’s greatest enemy so
we the people must
thank you
you