We should celebrate September 17 because we developed and still live by a document that assures the rule of law and the possibilities of freedom to Americans.
John M. Grondelski | September 17, 2026 www.americanthinker.com
September 17 is Constitution Day, the 239th anniversary of the 1787 signing. Roughly nine months later, it became “the supreme law of the land,” a status it has enjoyed since. It is the oldest written national constitution still in effect.
We take that fact for granted. The idea of a national, written constitution is something we expect. It has, in fact, become so normative that even countries that generally ignore their constitutions (especially their rights guarantees) still feel an obligation to have one. In the 21st century, that’s taken as normal. In the 18th century, it was not something to be taken for granted.
Britain would, of course, say it had a constitution, and it did, of sorts. It was an uncodified one, based on custom, which means -- in the end -- that it is custom and respect for tradition, not necessarily the binding power of law, that limits what can be done. A written constitution avoids that temptation.
We ought to celebrate September 17, not just because we were “first” and now “oldest.” We should celebrate September 17 because we developed and still live by a document that assures the rule of law and the possibilities of freedom to Americans, even if the United States of 2026 is very different from the one of 1787.
We should also realize our Constitution is under attack. It has long been under attack by the partisans of a “living Constitution” who claim that the fundamental law “is what the judges say it is” (Charles Evan Hughes), and not what its text says. But then you lapse into an unwritten frame of government whose meaning is then determined not by prime ministers and cabinets but unelected judges.
But that’s not the biggest problem of the “living Constitutionalists.” The biggest problem is Constitutional bait-and-switch.
The Constitution is a contract, a contract across generations to be and live in a certain kind of country. The text of the Constitution embodies its terms. But when text becomes suggestion, we cease to have a social contract to which Americans at one time assented. Instead, we have a ceaselessly malleable screen on which the elites generally have been able to project their Rorschach visions of a “just” society onto a country that never voted for them. At that point, as Abraham Lincoln observed, “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of” activist judges.
But the attack on our Constitution has assumed a new and, arguably more dangerous form. We see contemporary political activists, for example, trying to neuter the Electoral College and calling for outright abolition of the Senate. They propose packing the Supreme Court to ensconce “living Constitutionalism,” i.e., produce the outcomes they want and claim the Constitution imposes them.
When the framers signed the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin famously observed that what America had been given was “a republic, if you can keep it.” Every generation has had the challenge of keeping that republic by keeping constitutional faith. That task remains our challenge today.
For if we doubt the gravity of our task, consider that while America’s may have been the world’s first written national Constitution, Poland’s was the second. The Constitution of the Third of May 1791, inspired by the American Constitution, was a last-ditch effort to save Poland from being further carved up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria by undertaking necessary governmental reforms.
The resemblance ends there. Whereas the United States has enjoyed the blessings of its Constitution for 239 years, the Polish Constitution of the Third of May (which should mark its 235th anniversary this year) was quickly abolished by the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians. It was, in fact, the incentive for Poland’s further partition, wiping the country off Europe’s maps from 1795 until 1918.
The Constitution of the Third of May was, for its time, a democratic constitution for a constitutional monarchy. Now let’s engage in a thought experiment -- an idea proposed by some historians -- about what might have been had that Constitution survived.
It’s hard to imagine that a democratic constitution in Poland in the late 18th century would not have had effects on its authoritarian neighbors (which is why they wanted that constitution gone). Would a successfully democratic Poland have accelerated Europe’s springtime of nations? With democratic influence, might Germany have taken other directions than Prussian militarism? Might the power-sharing that Hungarians (and, later, Croats) demanded in the Austro-Hungarian Empire helped democratize that multiethnic entity? Most importantly, what might have been the effect on Tsarist Russia of a successful democratic state on its doorstep? If democratic trends had begun in any of these countries earlier than they did, might there not have been a World War I? A Hitler? A Lenin? A Stalin?
History in the subjunctive is, of course, not history: we know what happened. But it is worthwhile reflecting on what might have been and, in the words of our own Constitution’s Preamble, rededicate ourselves through it to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Happy Constitution Day!
