In these days in which technological knowledge has cornered the humanistic training , teachers have been deprived of their natural authority and politicians -all of them entangled in issues of leave estofa- decide to prostitute their leadership, it seems appropriate to offer as a social and pedagogical model the classical and painstaking Education received by the fathers of the American Constitution. The cultivated classicism of the founding fathers made it possible to elaborate and develop one of the most influential political documents in the History of Humanity: the Constitution of the United States.

The fathers of the American Constitution fought against England imbued with the enlightened liberal spirit of the time and, precisely because they did not despise their circumstance, they knew how to transcend it historically, thus giving continuity and direction to a classic revolution, still unfinished today. This is perhaps the hallmark that most distinguishes the American Revolution from its French counterpart, whose Jacobinism has been ideologically overcome in our time.

Part of the success of the American Revolution is due to the fact that the framers drew from the crystalline wellspring of ancient history and the classical Philosophy , thus giving solidity and consistency (muscularity, if I may use the word) to their own Constitution, which is the same as saying to their own identity. In contrast to the French Revolution, which was based on national sovereignty, the American Revolution was founded on the more genuine and permanent, though perhaps less romantic, concept of the people (We the People).

We need a Constitution not when we are already united (idea of French nation) but when we want to unite politically (idea of American people). In this sense, the United States of America is, for the Frenchified Spain and for the new emerging Europe, a perennial model . This paradigm reminds us that unité and indivisibilité are not a budget of the Constitution, but its effect. The Constitution is not so much a political decision of the nation, as a agreement of living as a people. Today, Spain is in dire need of it.

If History is the report of a social collective, the Constitution, written or not, acts as its soul. A people lives what its Constitution lives, since the latter is but the form of its own political unity. The scope of a Constitution is marked by the spirit of its constituents; in the American case, by the founding fathers, who, knowing that History is magistra vitae, time and again turned to it to channel and solve their problems. That is why the indomitable Alexander Hamilton did not hesitate to describe history as "the guide least fallible of human opinions", and James Madison, the founding father of the American Constitution, as "the oracle of truth". But not only on the theoretical level, but also on the practical level, this Delphi of the modern era exercised its dominion over a whole new way of doing politics.

The pillars of the American Constitution, organically structured, and always more far-reaching than the constitutional document itself, sink their roots in classical antiquity, so dear to the framers. How not to see in the American Senate or in the election of its president, in the bicameralism or in the system of International Office Spartan, Punic and Roman influences? This historical thesis has been defended with solid arguments by Bernard Bailyn, Russel Kirk, Clinton Rositer and recently, in a magisterial way, by my colleague David J. Bederman, in his interesting book The Classical Foundation of the American Constitution (2008).

It is enough to read carefully the founding fathers or to know their fascinating trajectory to confirm what I say. The founding fathers of the American nation were lovers of classical culture and were much more familiar with it than a graduate is today at Humanities. It is not surprising, then, that the unclassifiable Benjamin Franklin was compared to Prometheus, Socrates or Solon. Nor is it surprising that President Washington was a fervent admirer of the Roman patrician Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, made into an archetype by Cato the Elder, for being a model of honesty, detachment from power, frugality and integrity staff.

Washington's successor in the Presidency, John Adams, repeatedly stated that his favorite language , the most sublime of all existing languages, was Greek, to the reading of which he devoted thousands of hours, especially to the histories of Polybius. His rival and friend Thomas Jefferson, strongly influenced in his style by Sallust and Tacitus, defended tooth and nail that at the University of Virginia, founded by him, both Latin and Greek were subject compulsory in the curriculum. Finally, not to weary us with examples, the famous Federalist Papers, perhaps the most influential work of the revolutionary era, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, were written according to the most genuine Ciceronian model .

Things are not improvised. The nine colleges of the American colonies, most of them prestigious universities of our time (Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, Rutgers, Brown and Dartmouth) required a high level of Latin and Greek knowledge in their entrance test . American classicism was considered a social value rather than simply a desire for satisfaction staff. The father of the American Education , Noah Webster, described the training of his time in the following words, "The instruction of youth is directed toward the History of Greece, Rome, and Britain; the young are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes or Cicero, or the debates on political questions in the British Parliament." How far are these phrases from the contemporary Education , especially the Spanish one!

Let us not see, therefore, a fad or a whim in this classical Education promoted by the framers, but rather a firm decision taken after analyzing the reasons for dedicating so many hours to knowledge of classical antiquity.

The first of these was the firm desire to inculcate in the youth the noble ideal of liberty, which saw in the arbitrary exercise of power its principal adversary. That is why few peoples like the American people have so readily understood that the established measures that limit and control power are but one more instrument to preserve individual liberties, for which so many Americans have offered their lives. The framers admired from the classics the rationality of their writings and their argumentation. The Aristotelian references we find in The Federalist exalt calm, tranquility, stillness, intellectual leisure and the rational and critical contemplation of any cultivated spirit not enslaved by passions, which prevent overcoming political crises when they rage. Moreover, the eminently pragmatic character of the American people also coincided with the most authentic classical style of the search for excellence through the individual and collective exercise of moral virtues as an instrument of development and social progress.

The classical Education allows to masterfully combine the useful with the ornamental, ethics with aesthetics, impetus with rationality. Horace masterfully expressed it: Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. Nothing produces more success than marrying the useful with the sweet.

Here is the core topic of an authentic Education in values, of a fruitful and mature society of knowledge , of the cultural excellence that Spain cries out for its children. A conscience of greatness, of intellectual lordship, that allows to live life more fully, more solidarily, adorning it with virtues that immunize from any kind of corruption and promote a more critical and active civil society, more anchored in its time for being rooted in the History of Humanity.