I have been doing some reading and studying of the U.S. Constitution this week, primarily because I’m helping a couple of ninth-grade students with school work.

One of the questions we addressed last week was, why did the framers of the Constitution make the amendment process to the Constitution so difficult?

The brief answer provided by the text was: to discourage minor or frequent changes being made to the Constitution.

That answer is only a surface answer, I think. The answer behind that answer is this: because the nature of human beings is to mess good things up, the framers, therefore, made amending the Constitution difficult.

I believe that is why the establishment of the Constitution was so critically important in the first place. The framers, almost miraculously it seems, managed to produce a very, very effective mechanism for governing this Republic, i.e., the Constitution. For more than 200 years it has served its purpose very effectively.

Before anyone in the United States decides to attempt to amend the Constitution, he should be reminded of how effectively it has served its purpose for so long.

Jack Rollins is the managing editor of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.