Nearly 62% of voters in Chile rejected a new leftist draft of their constitution in a mandatory referendum over the weekend. The Chilean constitution has enjoyed neither the tenure nor the durability of the United States’ own founding document. In 2020 – after a whopping 42 amendments in less than 40 years – the people voted to write a new one. Though the electorate ultimately rejected the progressive proposal, leftist President Gabriel Boric plans to try again. Whether subsequent attempts fail just as spectacularly or not, there’s a lesson Americans should take to heart.
Chilean Constitution
From 1973 to 1990, Chile was ruled by a military junta – that is, a government led by a committee of military leaders – with General Augusto Pinochet at its head. In 1980, the regime replaced the 1925 Chilean constitution. Pinochet failed to extend his term another eight years, however, when he lost control over the nation to Christian-Democrat Patricio Aylwin in the election of 1990.
Pinochet’s version of the constitution, of course, was quite friendly to a military dictatorship. It was first amended in 1989 and has been altered at least once almost every year since. Even with all those changes, however, the people weren’t satisfied. When it came up to vote in 2020, the idea of a new constitution won the day.
Too Much Progress?
In addition to overhauling the nation’s tax and pension regulations, the new draft enshrined abortion access, housing, education, and national socialized health care as constitutional rights. Addressing climate change would have been a state requirement as well. The president and his very diverse assembly of constitution writers seemed quite pleased with the fruit of their labor – but the people weren’t. Thanks in large part to the mandatory nature of the referendum, more than 85% of the electorate participated. And they rejected the proposal by an overwhelming 62% to 38%. Even in normally far-left urban centers like Santiago, the “no” vote held the majority.
Before he was elected president by nearly 60% of voters in 2021, Boric had been a student protest leader who championed socialist reform. Though the initial idea of a new draft and Boric’s presidency both received broad support initially, it appears the people just aren’t ready for quite that much progress. Chile’s chief executive said he felt abandoned, but he assured reporters and the people that the referendum to replace the country’s constitution still stands and that he plans to try again. “I’m sure all this effort won’t have been in vain because this is how countries advance best, learning from experience and, when necessary, turning back on their tracks to find a new path forward,” the disappointed president declared in a television address.
One Generation Away
(Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
In the 1967 inaugural address for his first term as California governor, Ronald Reagan called freedom a fragile thing, saying it’s “never more than one generation away from extinction.” A look through American history shows the truth of those words. The nation we know today bears shockingly little resemblance to the Republic established by the Founders. They built a federal government that dealt primarily with disputes between the states, and foreign affairs like trade and national defense. Regulating behavior and daily life was left up to the states, generally speaking, so that the people could have a more direct hand in the legislation that affected them locally.
James Madison was the last Founding Father to die; he passed on at the age of 85 in June 1836. A mere three decades later, the Republic – then stretching to the Pacific – splintered and fell into war over whether the states would continue to govern themselves or be more constrained by the central government than they ever had been before. By the time the young nation turned 100, the 11 once-sovereign states on the losing side had been held under military protectorates, forced to scrap and rebuild their governments and ratify three amendments to the Constitution before being allowed back into the Union.
Federal income tax, Prohibition, the National Firearms Act of 1934, the New Deal, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the assault weapons ban in 1994, and myriad executive branch law enforcement and surveillance organizations came into being after that. Once the central government got a taste of authoritarian power, it never looked back.
The progressive left in America has wanted to do away with the Constitution for years – and calls for amendment, replacement, reinterpretation, and even that it simply be ignored continue today. Though the people of Chile ultimately rejected the socialist dream their left-wing leaders hoped to foist upon them, the fate of the Chilean constitution rested on a single referendum requiring a simple majority to pass. It illustrates the dangers of calling for constitutional reform in the United States today. Could the founding document be renegotiated to fit the Founders’ vision once again? Of course – but with more than 330 million people across 50 diverse states, we could just as easily end up with something like President Boric’s draft.
