The Constitution

Many Americans give the Constitution a sort of magical quality and consider it nearly perfect.

It isn't but the best quality about it is one we use the least, the ability to update it.

This document was reflective of its times and permitted slavery, denied women the right to vote and is heavily geared to protect property owners and doesn't support one person one vote very well.

In fact in order to pass it we had to tack on the first 10 Amendments (the Bill of Rights) almost immediately.

The Constitution itself does a good job of creating three equal but separate branches of Government with three different intertwined roles.

There are still issues in this country that should be updated, if we want a democratic country.  For example the electoral college and the distribution of Senators by State are not democratic in  implementation and lead to states with lower populations having more influence than populous states.

States or ex-colonies had a lot to do with this as the federal government was primarily designed to deal with things like foreign policy while the States concerned themselves with the everyday stuff.

It is still an important document that has helped this country thrive but it did also allow this country to fight a bloody civil war.

Amendments have corrected some of its early flaws, but we haven't fixed some others.

We need to.