John Zinn's The Constitution

The foundational American ideas that Zinn discuss in the article are the limits of the government, the checks and balances in the three branches of the government, it also talks about how the Supreme Courts is the branch of the government that interprets the law. Probably one of the main ideas that the founding fathers had when they wrote The Constitution was to limit the power of the government. The colonies were being being oppresses by a king so when they wrote the Constitution it was important to limit the power of the government. Zinn also mention how the judges of the Supreme Court are the ones in charge of interpreting the Constitution. However, he does believe that The Constitution alone is not going to protect the rights of the American

He mentions that racial equality did not happened only because the Thirteenth, Fourteen, and Fifteenth Amendments; he believed that without the Civil Rights Movements nothings would had happened even when the Constitution said so. In addition, he thinks that one-way people can protect their freedom of speech is by being courageous and saying what they think and then defending their right of freedom of speech. He mentions about the lack of rights when it comes to economic justice in the Constitution. Like he mentions, people would not have rights like minimum wage, and other economics-related right without asking for them. His conclusion is that if people do not voice their request the constitution by itself is not going to give people their

I believe we can use the Constitution as a guide-line of our government. I agree with Zinn that without people wanting changes, we would not have the rights and liberties that we have right now; however, I think the Constitution made those changes to be much easier to achieved. The Constitution is such an “open” document that even if it was written centuries ago, we can still go back to it today seek for answer for question the rights we have about same sex married, gun control, the right to privacy that we have with our electronics devices and social media, healthcare and many other areas that back then were unthinkable. I think he is right because as society changes and new generations are born their ideas and belief also change. If we were to depend on the beliefs they had when they wrote the Constitution, woman would not be able to vote, abortion would be illegal, we would probably still have slavery, and many other things that in today society are unacceptable because we wanted those