Hillsdale College' Constitution 101

Each lecture is pre-recorded and lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be released by noon each Monday according to the schedule. Once released, they are available to view at your convenience.

You will receive an email each week informing you that new material is available.

Featuring an expanded format from the “Introduction to the Constitution” lecture series with Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn, Constitution 101 follows closely the one-semester course required of all Hillsdale College undergraduate students.

In this course, you can: watch lectures from the same Hillsdale faculty who teach on campus; study the same readings taught in the College course; submit questions for weekly Q&A sessions with the faculty;

You must register in order to participate in Constitution 101. There is no cost to register for this course, but we ask that you consider a donation to support our efforts to educate millions of Americans about our nation’s Founding documents and principles.

This is really an excellent course and it is free. We are in the second week and the lectures are outstanding. Enroll and watch the archived lectures anytime. The readings and a circa 40 minute lecture are posted every Monday. Anyone can submit questions for a question and answer session posted every Thursday.

""Course Readings for Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution

Pre-Course Readings: The Declaration of Independence The Articles of Confederation The Northwest Ordinance The Constitution of the United States of America

“The American Mind” Week 1 — Larry P. Arnn Letter to Henry Lee • Thomas Jefferson On the Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero Nicomachean Ethics • Aristotle The Politics • Aristotle Discourses Concerning Government • Algernon Sidney Second Treatise of Government • John Locke Fragment on the Constitution and the Union • Abraham Lincoln The Inspiration of the Declaration • Calvin Coolidge “The Declaration of Independence”

Week 2 — Thomas G. West The Declaration of Independence Letter to Henry Lee • Thomas Jefferson An Election Sermon • Gad Hitchcock Common Sense • Thomas Paine Virginia Declaration of Rights • George Mason The Northwest Ordinance Annual Message to Congress • Franklin D. Roosevelt “The Problem of Majority Tyranny”

Week 3 — David Bobb Federalist 10 • James Madison Circular Letter to the States • George Washington Letter to John Jay • George Washington Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIII: Constitution • Thomas Jefferson Vices of the Political System of the United States • James Madison “Separation of Powers: Preventing Tyranny”

Week 4 — Kevin Portteus Federalist 47 • James Madison Federalist 48 • James Madison Federalist 51 • James Madison “Separation of Powers: Ensuring Good Government”

Week 5 — Will Morrisey Federalist 52 • James Madison Federalist 53 • James Madison Federalist 55 • James Madison Federalist 57 • James Madison Federalist 62 • James Madison Federalist 63 • James Madison Federalist 70 • Alexander Hamilton Federalist 71 • Alexander Hamilton Federalist 73 • Alexander Hamilton Federalist 78 • Alexander Hamilton Marbury v. Madison • John Marshall “Religion, Morality,and Property”

Week 6 — David Bobb Fast Day Proclamation of the Continental Congress Virginia Declaration of Rights • George Mason Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments • James Madison Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association • Thomas Jefferson The Northwest Ordinance Letter to the Hebrew Congregation • George Washington Farewell Address • George Washington On Property • James Madison

“The Crisis of Constitutional Government” Week 7 — Will Morrisey Speech on Kansas-Nebraska Act • Abraham Lincoln Dred Scott v. Sandford • Roger Taney Speech on the Dred Scott Decision • Abraham Lincoln A House Divided • Abraham Lincoln Address at Cooper Institute • Abraham Lincoln “Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution”

Week 8 — Kevin Portteus First Inaugural Address • Abraham Lincoln Message to Congress in Special Session • Abraham Lincoln The Emancipation Proclamation • Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Address • Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address • Abraham Lincoln “The Progressive Rejection of the Founding”

Week 9 — Ronald J. Pestritto The American Conception of Liberty • Frank Goodnow What is Progress? • Woodrow Wilson Liberalism and Social Action • John Dewey Socialism and Democracy • Woodrow Wilson “The Recovery of the Constitution”

Week 10 — Larry P. Arnn Commonwealth Club Address • Franklin D. Roosevelt What Good’s a Constitution? • Winston Churchill Annual Message to Congress • Franklin D. Roosevelt Remarks at the University of Michigan • Lyndon B. Johnson Commencement Address at Howard University • Lyndon B. Johnson A Time for Choosing • Ronald Reagan First Inaugural Address • Ronald Reagan""

Having looked at the syllabus, and watched the first lecture, either Hillsdale has the doctrine of a living Constitution, or they are complicit with those who are afraid of the truth. Even NPR's Charlie Rose was shocked that obvious questions had been asked by many citizens, and never been answered. Hillsdale has avoided the too cavalierly dismissed, foolishly discussed, misunderstood, and intentionally obscured provision chosen by our framers to define the requirements for our sovereign, our Commander in Chief, our Chief Executive, Article II Section 1.

Hillsdale and other pundits have buried our first law book, Vattel’s Law of Nations, cited more during the first thirty years after ratification, than any other legal source (Grotian Society Papers 1972, Ruddy; Arthur Nussbaum, A concise History of the Law of Nations) They have been cowed into saying no word about Jefferson's choice of Law of Nations for our first law school, at William and Mary in 1779. They don't mention the six copies of Law of Nations sent by Franklin to the Continental Congress in 1763 and 1778. They have ignored the only definition for a citizen provided in The Constitution before 1868, when the 14th Amendment provided the basis for naturalized citizens. They don't explain that a definition never amended or redefined, which redefinitions must be explicit, is the law. They have ignored the report of historians, supported by archival records from New York's first public library in 1789, that the first, and only book on Washington's desk on his first day as President was Vattel’s law of Nations. They know better than Alexander Hamilton who, in his September 15 1790 letter to Washington, noted :

“But Vatel, perhaps the most accurate and approved of the writers on the laws of nations, preserves a mean between these different opinions. This is the sum of what he advances:...”

Citizens are the foundation of a republic. The character of The President is the only citizen our framers felt compelled to proscribe, leaving Congress to come up with “a uniform rule for naturalization.”, Article 1 Section 8. Hillsdale is presumed to have read Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, and know that definitions used by the Constitution were intentionally left out of the text, relegated to the common language of the framers, to preserve the meanings when the meanings of words change.

Our greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall, had there been any doubt, removed that doubt with his usual piercing clarity about the definition accepted by the Court, citing Vattel in The Venus. Marshall was on the Virginia Ratification Congress, and fought in the Revolution. Do our historians presume to know that he didn't mean what he told us, and Chief Justice Waite affirmed in order to resolve Elizabeth Minor's complaint?

Hillsdale will likely present lots about our history which is true, but have shown that their claims to independence from the federal government don't mean much. They will first, avoid controversy. They cannot have steered around so central a provision of our Constitution without a reason. Whether the reason was coercion, fear of Alinsky ridicule (Alinsky's 5th Rule), they show a lack of the courage of the convictions they profess to teach. They know better than to lie, as the left has done repeatedly, editing Supreme Court decisions to keep the knowledgeable and curious off the trail. But Hillsdale could have countered the lies of the left. Instead, like Levin, like Hannity, like Limbaugh, like Hedgecock, they simply pretend there is no Chief Justice Marshall who explained who are natural born citizens, no Chief Justice Waite, no Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, or that Congressman John Bingham, the abolitionist who tried Lincoln's assassins and both wrote and sponsored the 14th Amendment, didn't really mean what he twice told the House in 1866:

“I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….

Whether they mean to or not, Hillsdale is serving the purposes of enemies of our Republic, enemies who knew their power would trump the too loudly proclaimed beliefs in the principles of our framers and founders, because these enemies could threaten the livlihoods of the protectors of truth. Read the remarkable Amicus Brief written by Attorney Leo Donofrio http://www.scribd.com/doc/79112841/AMICUS-BRIEF-by-Leo-Donofrio-in-Georgia-Presidential-Eligibility-Case-202, and ignored by the Muslim Georgia Judge Malihi, who ignored the law just as Obama did, by ignoring a subpoena. Donofrio's analysis was guided by his certainty that self contradictory structure in Wong Kim Ark, juxtaposing U.S. Common law with English common law was not an accident. Justice Gray was appointed by an ineligible president, Chester Arthur. Having an objective can make history much more interesting, and coherent. Donofrio's analysis shows, by connecting the precedent confirming the Article II Section 1 definition in Minor, cited by Gray in Wong Kim Ark, what happened when justices and legal historians misconstrued and misquoted, and misused fuzzy language. Donofrio dissects Justice Gray's Wong Kim Ark, which helps the reader to understand why our framers, John Jay and Washington, specified a natural born citizen. Donofrio's work illuminates that the Constitution is law. He has uncovered a remarkable chain of errors and intentional misdirection which led to what is probably a mistaken interpretation leading to to anchor babies, the children of aliens born on our soil.

Donofrio's work as a historian, discovering and documenting the ineligibility of President Chester Arthur om 2008, whose violation was the same as Barack Obama's, would be all over the nation's media if it didn't point at the same deficiency in Obama. Not a word in the media, outside of FR. Arthur was born to an alien (British) father. He covered it up with phony allegations, which he orchestrated, that he was born in Canada, or Ireland; he too hid his birth certificate, which confirmed his birth in Vermont. It would be a surprise to hear that Hillsdale has acknowledged that remarkable discovery, used already by the Indiana Supreme Court in a mock decision, Ankeny, given the fearful scurrying around the truth so much in evidence.

Another attorney, Mario Apuzzo, has written dozens of essays as he explored the historical foundations of the common law familiar to our framers, to prepare for a lawsuit filed by Naval Commander Charles Kerchner. Mr. Apuzzo is a wonderful and patient teacher, and, he is not afraid of the truth. What Mario Apuzzo's attempt to force the Supreme Court to honor their sole charter for jurisdiction where Constitutional interpretation seems to demonstrate how little the Constition means, as well as the remarkable vagueness of the term standing.

Colleges and Universities are businesses, and susceptible to the threats of dictatorial federalism. You may well learn from Hillsdale's lectures, but don't expect them to address the important Constitutional questions of our time. Read original sources, and the writing of people who are committed to the truth like Donofrio and Apuzzo. The institutions, including Hillsdale, are too afraid of the left to honestly discuss the foundations of our Republic. At a time when those foundations are being attacked, don't waste your time with those afraid of the truth. There may be faculty at Hillsdale who will speak openly, and there are certainly faculty at other colleges who know the truth, and have kept quiet, but knowledge of The Constitution is Hillsdale's public identity, the theme of their marketing, and demonstrably a false premise.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.