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This week’s readings are primarily concerned with refining the ideological foundation and implementation of the Constitution. The readings provide different perspectives ranging from political elites, common people, and even discussions of symbolic sign to justify the Constitution and American democracy in general. The debate between Hamilton and Madison and the subsequent evolvement to Democratic-Republican societies challenged assumptions about deference to political leadership. Moreover, the discussions between different political groups demonstrated that government power was still constrained by the perception and the understanding of ordinary citizens. The emergence of the societies (parties) had also changed the political landscape by raising concerns of how people could voice their concerns between elections. The aforementioned discussions and concerns planted the seed for the formation of a bipartisan congress and new institutions that were not specified by the Constitution. Another discussion was about the role of woman in the Constitution through the proportion of suffrage during the Philadelphia Convention. James Wilson from Pennsylvania suggested representation in the lower house should be “in proportion to the whole number of white& other free Citizens & inhabitants of every age sex & condition including those bound to servitude for a term of years and”. He claimed that if the purpose of government was “the improvement of the human mind and the protection of personal rights, women must be included”. He also argued that women were never any less honest, virtuous, or wise than men. Therefore, women and men should have the same right in the society. Philosophically, Wilson contended that government was created for society and particularly a domestic society because marriage was the foundation for social relationships and for patriotism because women’s role as wives and mothers. Therefore, they had to be represented by the new government created by the Constitution. I found his arguments quite compelling, modern and progressive considering the era he lived in, which also means that it was not well conceived at the time. However, this radical statement made during the Philadelphia Convention foreshadowed the rise of a new liberal nation that we live in today. Finally, we learned about mastodon, a symbol of the new nation’s conquering spirit. Mastodon, native to North America, helped the founders to envision themselves as rulers of the new world. People at the time imagined the mastodon as a ferocious carnivore to express an American superiority and capability to defeat the British lion. Furthermore, mastodon was an emblem for the leaders to justify their dominance in the New World and the conquest of the American west. Even though mastodon was later found as an herbivore, it served as an emblem of power for the new leaders who lived in a psychologically insecure society at the time.