The Constitution of the United States was drafted and signed in 1787 and eventually ratified in 1788, setting in stone a frame of government that has stood the test of time and has helped to shape the Neo-liberal world we live in today. The ideas that were extolled in its pages were nothing short of revolutionary at the time, and the world watched to see whether the fledgling country would fold under its own idealistic constraints.

But as history will show, the country spent the remainder of the 18^th century and almost all of the 19^th trying to figure it all out. But after 100 or some odd years, a few broken promises, just one Civil War and only a smidge of genocide later, the country was ready to become a global player.

Just to be clear, yes I am being ironic, yes I do love my country, and no I don’t condemn our ancestors for what they did, for as Winston Churchill says, “The US invariably does the right thing after exhausting all other options.”

After only a bit of imperialist fever and two world wars, the US became the world’s preeminent world power controlling everything from the form of currency the world uses as its form of exchange, to the ideological principles that would later be adopted by almost the entire industrialized world.

And the Constitution saw us through all of this, acting as a guide for when things got a bit hairy. We had to amend it, here and there, to take out things like slavery and to put in little side notes about women being able to vote, but on the whole, it has served as a guideline for everything from how to go to war to what role government should play in the lives of Americans.

And while the Constitution is perhaps, for me, the greatest piece of American writing followed in part by the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, it is the oldest functioning Constitution still in use. My point: it’s a bit dated.

The concepts expressed certainly aren’t and the ideals such concepts stand on still ring true today, but some of the explicit detailed language is outdated and we shouldn’t shy away from going against things expressed in the Constitution simply because they happen to be in the Constitution.

For example, an argument I hear from strict constructionists against the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 is that “technically there is no right to privacy in the Constitution.” For those of you unfamiliar, this is the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

And while that may be true, the founding fathers couldn’t think of everything. I mean, the document is 200 years old. They were living in a completely different time. When the Constitution was written, the population of the US hadn’t even reached 4 million yet. Today the population is 318.9 million.

Now getting embroiled in a debate over whether abortion is ethical or not is an entirely different story, but all Roe vs Wade did was make it legal for women to choose to have an abortion if they needed to. The court made a decision that, while it had no precedent laid out in the Constitution, benefited the lives of American women, and America as a whole.

How? All I’ll say is this. The same people who are usually clamoring over the fact that life begins at inception are usually the same ones who complain when their earnings are garnished to support welfare initiatives for the children they demand be born.

Another argument I hear is “You cannot change the Second Amendment.” And while I'll shy away from taking a side here as well, I’d like to point out that we as a people can choose to alter any amendment at any time:

amendment:noun: 1: a minor change in a document, 2: a change or addition to a legal or statutory document

Obviously a great deal of thought and debate goes into amending the Constitution, but we should never shy away from the concept simply because we feel, for whatever reason, that we cannot. That we are somehow less wise or visionary than the Founding Fathers were in their day.

We have the right to make any changes we see fit to make the lives of all Americans better. And whenever people say “the founding fathers wouldn’t even recognize our country anymore,” I’m a bit floored.

Well of course they wouldn’t. That’s a good thing. We have a federal reserve and an unpegged floating currency. We have more military might than the next closest 32 countries on the list combined. We split atoms and made nuclear weapons. We have an invisible network that allows one of my cousins halfway across the world to read the words I’m writing.

The world and our place in it is vastly different, we should never shy away from amending a document laid out for us simply because we are afraid of violating the vision of great men who died over 200 years ago.

I feel like some people reading this are like “well, duh, thanks for stating the obvious again Matt.” But the last time an amendment was passed was in 1992, during the Presidency of Bush SR. I bring this up because around the same time, bipartisanship all but evaporated on the federal level.

This was caused by a variety of things but most prominent among them was the extensive use of negative smear campaigns against his opponent in presidential election. It was the first time a candidate used the word “liberal” as an insult to imply weakness and slightly squirrelly tendencies, cementing the divide that has plagued our country ever since.

Since then, we’ve had two government shutdowns and it’s hard enough to pass a law in Congress, let alone propose and ratify an amendment to the Constitution. And as this election cycle draws to a close, while Trump may be seriously flawed, both as a person and a candidate, some of what he says isn’t wrong.

I’m referring to the never ending rhetoric about the system and how it’s “rigged” against most Americans, particularly those of the lower middle class and the silent majority. And he’s not necessarily wrong. Fixtures like the Electoral College make states like Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, Alaska and even Hawaii all but irrelevant to presidential candidates.

So when candidates pander to voters in swing states, using lines like “I want to be a President for all Americans,” it’s hard for Americans in these and others states to see them with anything short of disdain.

The Electoral College was put in Article II in the first place because the founding fathers didn’t trust the generally illiterate and under educated populous with a decision like the Presidency. We weren’t even allowed to vote for our own senators until 1913, and women weren’t even allowed to vote period (no pun intended), until 1920.

Should the Electoral College be abolished? Maybe maybe not. But if the rise of Trump has proven anything, it’s that something has to be done. There is a large group of people, a group closing in on half the country, who would rather support a xenophobic blowhard than a seemingly crooked member of the establishment.

We shouldn’t despair over how bad our choices are for next Tuesday. We should realize why the candidates we have got to where they are. One is at the top of her ticket due to morally dubious methods, and the other is exploiting the anger of those who recognize her deceit. Perhaps the establishment does need to change. Perhaps it’s time to take a good long look at our Constitution, and add or remove anything that will make for a brighter future for America.