Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sa... — Edmund Morgan

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

Author: Edmund Morgan

Insight: There's something deeply human about treating the past as untouchable—especially when that past seems to have worked. We do this all the time: we inherit a system, a tradition, or even just "the way things are done," and we assume the people before us must have figured it out better than we could. It feels safer that way. Questioning feels like disrespect. But here's the thing: the people who created what we inherit were solving problems they actually faced, with knowledge they actually had. They weren't solving our problems. When we treat their solutions as permanent answers rather than starting points, we're essentially saying our circumstances don't matter. A constitution or system that works brilliantly for one generation can quietly become a straitjacket for the next—not because it was bad, but because everything around it changed. This isn't really about revolution or throwing things out. It's about recognizing that wisdom isn't about being frozen in time; it's about being willing to learn and adapt. The actual reverence for the past would be doing what they did—thinking hard about what your moment requires, rather than endlessly copying their answers.