It’s been a while since I’ve taken up space on this page.

It isn’t that I haven’t had anything about which to write. The problem has been finding the time to put it on paper.

I’ve been preparing for a new semester, and I’m working with a new textbook. This means that all those lectures based on the old textbook, the ones I’ve become very comfortable with over the last several years, are out the window. Yes, students, your instructor has sometimes recycled class materials, all of which are now irrevocably obsolete.

American government being my discipline, I’ve been spending much of my time mulling over the Constitution, and melding some (hopefully) original, thoughts into lectures based on the new tome.

When I go through this exercise, my takeaway has always been the same. I am, at the same time, both encouraged and discouraged.

This time has been no different.

I find encouragement in the fact that this one document, adopted 229 years ago when 13 colonies became states, remains the foundation for a nation that has grown to more 330 million people, a nation that now spans from the Atlantic to the Pacific – and then west to tropical islands and north to what was once termed “Seward’s Folly.”

By comparison, according to one source, in the 69 years from 1789 to 1858, France had 16 different constitutions

What I find amazing is how much practical wisdom is packed into just over 4,500 words of prose.

It has only seven articles, or sections. The Constitution of South Africa (adopted in 1996) has 244.The Constitution of India (1950) has 395.

It has survived almost intact since its adoption, along with the Bill of Rights shortly thereafter. Since 1791, more than 11,600 amendments have been proposed, but only 17 have been successfully adopted. The California state constitution has been amended more than 520 times.

The document was not written by angels, or philosophers arguing over how many of those angels would hypothetically fit on the head of a pin. It was hammered out by men with serious disagreements – some of which would lead to the Civil War only 70 years later – but they persisted, because failure was not an acceptable option.

I am impressed by the fact that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, were not intended to empower the government, but to protect the governed from government overreach – and from leaders with totalitarian tendencies.

I am in awe of a system of checks and balances that has functioned, like a well-tuned clock, as intended, down to the present day.

As noted, I am also discouraged.

I am disappointed in elected leaders who seem more committed to achieving their political agenda than they are in the maintenance of the Constitution itself.

I am appalled at the willingness of some to prevaricate, which is a fancy word for “lie,” to curry favor with a chief executive who has exhibited limited understanding of the Constitution’s content or intention, for short-term political gain, and at the risk of undercutting the institutions and procedures intended to protect our long-term freedom and independence.

I am afraid of damage to our national soul that may long outlast the perpetrators of the damage itself.

I think we take the Constitution for granted. Perhaps we should not. According to that new textbook, if 18 delegates in New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts (that’s just 3 percent of the 580 votes cast in their state conventions) had changed their votes in the ratification process, the Constitution would never have been adopted in the first place.

But it was, and my thanks go out belatedly to folks like James Madison, who wrote, with uncanny foresight, in the Federalist Papers that “enlightened statesmen may not always be at the helm.” Again, from the textbook, “The Constitution did not ask people to be virtuous, instead, it developed a government that would operate smoothly even if its citizens were greedy and its leaders corrupt.”

I think this new textbook (By the People, Brief Third Edition/Marone, Kersh) might just have some potential.