Things Worth Remembering: The Imperfection of America

Welcome to Douglas Murray’s Things Worth Remembering, in which he presents great speeches from famous orators we should commit to heart. Today, ahead of Constitution Day, he reflects on the oldest Founding Father’s defense of the imperfect document on which our politics is based. Scroll down to hear Douglas read from Benjamin Franklin’s final speech. 

Readers may not know that it was on this very day, September 15, that the wording of the American Constitution was at last agreed upon. Accord had been a long time coming. The year was 1787, it had been almost half a decade since the British had granted the United States independence, and the Founding Fathers had been negotiating for three months over the finer points of the document.

It would be another two days before these men officially signed it—hence why we mark Constitution Day on September 17, this coming Tuesday.

This final ritual took place in a closed room at Pennsylvania’s State House, in Philadelphia, now known as Independence Hall. It is less than a ten minute walk from where presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated Tuesday, in a building named for the American government’s ultimate law: the National Constitution Center. 

In these polarized times, readers will be unsurprised to learn that the men who gave us America have fallen rather out of fashion. A few years ago, a poll found that whereas 63 percent of voters said they viewed the Founding Fathers as heroes, among the under-thirties that figure shrank to 39 percent. Meanwhile, fully 31 percent of U.S. voters under 30 said that they saw the Founders as “villains.” Perhaps we should expect nothing less of an age in which Winston Churchill must be defended against claims that he was the “chief villain” of World War II.

It is worth reminding ourselves, then, of the heroism of the men who took up arms, and then quills, to birth this nation. Which brings us back to September 17, 1787. As the final day of this Constitutional Convention began, the document was read aloud one last time. Then came the remarks of its oldest signatory. 

Benjamin Franklin was 81 years old—incidentally, the very same age as Joe Biden is today. He was too frail to speak before the Convention himself, so he passed what he had written to James Wilson, another Pennsylvanian, who read it for him. This would be Franklin’s final speech.