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You’re welcome.

I guess I’ve just used our discussion as a kind of launching pad to rough out an outline (below) of the possible order of things in approaching the Constitution in a way the average Joe could understand. I guess you’re the first recipient of this (I’m usually inspired and triggered by such discussions to formulate these kinds of ideas). I might post the list below on FR as a vanity post. Anyway, thanks for being a kind of inspirational source and please don’t feel you have to read all of this. :)

1) Getting a good grasp of the PRESUMPTIONS of the Constitution helped by reading the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the Declaration of Independence and certain selected Federalist Papers. The major presumptions are that rights and powers are inherent and God-given in individuals - they are NOT given by government, that the Constitution does NOT grant rights and powers to individuals but the Constitution protects those rights, that the powers of the federal government are CREATED and DELEGATED by individuals through the states via the Constitution by which the feds themselves are both created and limited. If it is not a specific, enumerated power, it is not a power of the federal government whereas the opposite is true with the states and individuals. The states and the people are presumed sovereign outside of Constitutional mandates and limitations.

2) Understanding the basic STRUCTURAL doctrines in the Constitution by reading resources with solid Constitutional-based reasoning like Robert Bork’s works. The major structure of the feds is the three branches, and the separation and checks & balances of powers between the branches. Article I creates the legislative branch, Article II creates the executive branch, Article III the judicial branch, Article IV puts certain limitations on the states, Article V how to amend the Constitution, and Article VI declares the Constitution and ONLY those U.S. laws PURSUANT to the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land.

3) Once you’ve got a hold of that, you can READ through the Constitution with a basic understanding.

4) SCOTUS decisions are generally problematic although the pre-1900 decisions are better and more helpful in accurately interpreting constitutional phrases. There are very few good resources that critically analyze SCOTUS decisions based on sound constitutional understanding, and Bork’s books are one of those rare resources.

There is a strong argument that society has granted SCOTUS powers much greater power than what the ratifiers contemplated. Nowhere does the Constitution give SCOTUS solitary power to create uncontroverted universal law from the bench. SCOTUS is the branch that applies the Constitution to INDIVIDUAL CASES and CONTROVERSIES. Thus SCOTUS decisions, especially if soundly based on the Constitution, are limited to precedent for like cases, thus creating a kind of constitutional common law. And a SCOTUS decision that is deemed unconstitutional should be ignored and nullified by the states or the other federal branches, but not without sound Constitution-based explanation and reasons for such nullification.

5) Bork’s writings also help in understanding modern PERVERTED PRESUMPTIONS that depart from the Constitutional as written and originally understood and intended. Such perversions are generally those Congressional acts and SCOTUS decisions over the last 100 years or so that have given the feds sweeping, authoritative, and actually totalitarian powers with little to no constitutional reasoning or basis for doing so. The big three perversions are

a) “The Incorporation Doctrine” - judicial misapplication of the 14th Amendment giving the feds sweeping powers not contemplated by the ratifiers of the amendment.

b) The [Interstate] “Commerce Clause” (Art I, Sec 8, Cl 3) astonishingly been expanded by Congress and ratified by SCOTUS to give the feds almost unlimited power over intrastate and local economic activities again, not contemplated by the ratifiers of the Constitution.

c) The “Necessary and Proper Clause” (Art I, Sec 8, Cl 18), originally intended to allow executive enforcement and regulation pursuant to legislation within the scope of the Constitution, the N&P Clause has been expanded beyond constitutional grounds and limits to such an extent that a quasi-fourth branch of government has been created: the Administrative State with behemoth unconstitutional bureaucracies.

Armed with this knowledge, the American People could begin to intelligently move among their elected representatives to cut government to its constitutional size and recover their freedoms and their Constitution that protects them.