Servant of the People: The Story of the Constitution of the United States

When the United States of America was ten years old, another crisis in the long series of crises was afoot. Under the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the independence of America, each state was treated as sovereign. But that sovereignty now threatened their continuing independence, as each state passed tariffs against the others, issued their own moneys which were worthless in the others, and left the central government bankrupt, unable to guard the country against a Great Britain which still hoped to reverse the War of Independence.

And so a constitution convention was called -- sort of. Intended to amend the Articles of Confederation, they wound up writing the Constitution of the United States.

On leaving the convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a crowd of anxious people what form of government they had wrought. His answer was "A democracy. If you can keep it."

As I write this, we are in another crisis in that same long series of crises. Can we keep our democracy?

Some excellent but unknown actors gave us an interesting but distorted -- on purpose -- history of the creation of the Constitution.

In both the Declaration and the Treaty of Paris, that ended the War for Independence, the 13 seceding colonies were termed "sovereign" and "independent."

Unfortunately, politicians -- yes, even back then -- created so many problems for the confederated states, including trying to place tariffs on products from other states, debts, taxes, trade itself, were made onerous and difficult.

The War had created obscene debts, even though the military forces stole everything they could from the people they were supposedly trying to serve (stole, mind you, at the orders of their officers, including Gen'l. George Washington). How to levy taxes for the national debt was one problem. They said.

Anyway, this short film propagandizes for repealing the Articles of Confederation and establishing the Constitution.

As history, an awful lot is missing, including Benjamin Franklin, but it can be used as an introduction and maybe an invitation for people to try to find out more.

That Constitution, flawed as it was, is still better than any similar such document in the world. Too bad that the federal government generally ignores it today.

It's probably difficult to find a copy of this film, but it was shown on Tuesday night, 2 August 2022, on TCM.

Here we are in 2025 and I wish more people would take the 20 minutes to watch this and absorb the points it has to make for a Federal government balanced by the 3 branches of government and why Congress needs to take their role more seriously in representing the people along with the states they represent.

The Constitution should be a document that is in service to the people and not just one interest, group or party.

When you have states creating tariffs and their own money it can and will be counterproductive to the benefit of our nation.

The idea that we should be basing decisions about the literal wording of the constitution instead of the actual intent of the constitution only holds us frozen back in time.