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Management

Campaign Constitution is a Colorado nonprofit corporation managed solely by John M. Cogswell upon the advice of a fifteen-member Advisory Committee composed of educated scholars who know more about the Constitution and the affairs of men than he does. As of this time, the only member of the Advisory Committee is Michael D. Iseman, M.D., who has distinguished himself in pulmonology and the treatment of tuberculosis and in his concern for the health of our country. In due course, Mr. Cogswell expects to appoint others to this Advisory Committee.

 

Mr. Cogswell will make decisions for Campaign Constitution as long as he is able, with the advice and recommendations of a 15 person Advisory Committee. While he acknowledges that more and better ideas can come from group collaboration, he also recognizes that decisions made by an individual avoid unacceptable compromises. Any group suffers from the same infirmities of government. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, said:

 

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence when the infamy of bad action is to be divided among the number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses for which they would blush in a private capacity.

 

 

            In The Prince and the Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli, a great discerner of human nature, said:

 

But we must assume, as a general rule, that it never or rarely happens that a republic or monarchy is well constituted, or its own institutions entirely reformed, unless it is done by only one individual; it is even necessary.

 

 

Today, we are led by those who would have the “fattest of the milk.” Leaders want power and want to preserve their standing and reputation as leaders. They invoke principle as an excuse to avoid discourse and harmony. They put their election ahead of their country. Sidney Hook in The Hero of History (1992) said:

 

A democracy is imperiled not alone by its heroes, necessary as they may sometimes be for survival. It is in imperiled by any group of its citizens who are more attached to the advantages or privileges they enjoy under democracy, or hope it will bring, than they are to the democratic process of bringing them about. For these groups, which set greater store on peace or prosperity or social status than they do on the methods of democracy to preserve (or modify) them, are the ones which feel justified in calling in the hero to cherish their “goods” even at the cost of democracy.

 

            He also confirmed the importance of vigilance:

 

A democracy delegates leadership but cannot surrender to it. A democracy—a self-governing republic of citizens with equal rights—must be jealous of the powers it delegates to its leaders; for unless power is limited by other power, it is subject to usurpation and abuse. In a healthy democracy the leader must be more than a mouthpiece of those who select him. He cannot trail after events, or in a world of dizzying change break out the flags and rhetoric of yesteryear to conceal the absence of an adequate program. He must anticipate events, devise policies for the benefit not only of the interests that supported him but for the interests of all. For where there is no vision, a people perishes—particularly in times of danger.

That is why the heroes in a democracy are not likely to be event-making men and women unless they subvert the democratic process.

 

Public leadership is understood by its absence because then institutions, like political parties, the media, religions, and special interests, take over and resolution of controversy requires an unacceptable compromise. By this lesson, one can only conclude that we have no public leadership today. As armies are governed by a single general, so must the reform of a republic. We look forward to a Constitution which encourages our citizens and leaders to live together in harmony with reverence for the institutions that have given, and will again give, each of us that proper measure of freedom that supplies to all an equal opportunity to pursue his own happiness.