Posted on 01/07/2005 3:51:55 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
The most important legal document in America is the United States Constitution; and, when asked, more than 90% of the American people say the Constitution is important to them. Congress also recognized the ongoing importance of this document in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked to proclaim September 17 to 23 of each year as "Constitution Week" in remembrance of the signing of the United States Constitution.
This year, two hundred and sixteen years after the Constitution was adopted, many Americans will celebrate Constitution Week with recitations of the Preamble, with events reliving the signing of the Constitution, and even with a special ceremony of public bell ringing in Philadelphia where this important document was drafted.
But just how many Americans have actually read the Constitution or know what this document actually says? After all, many law schools do not even require that law students read the Constitution as part of their program of study.
According to various surveys taken of the American people in recent years, 95% of them could not correctly answer basic questions about the Constitution:
Despite this lack of knowledge about the Constitution, 84% of Americans believe that in order for our American constitutional form of government to work as intended, Americans are required to function as an active and informed citizenry. Citizenship Week this September is a good time for all Americans, and especially Christians, to resolve to become both informed about the Constitution and active in ensuring its preservation.
The following is a list of the key provisions in the various articles of the United States Constitution. If you learn these few facts, you will instantly be more informed about our Constitution than the vast majority of Americans.
Other key amendments that have become part of the Constitution include: the abolition of slavery (Amendment XIII: 1865); authority for a federal income tax (Amendment XVI: 1913); the right of women to vote (Amendment XIX: 1920); a two term limit for Presidents (Amendment XXII: 1951); lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen years (Amendment XXVI: 1971), and delaying the effective date of Congressional pay raises until after an election (Amendment XXVII: 1992).
Finally, there have been fifty bills proposing additional amendments to the Constitution of the United States introduced into the current 108th Congress. Many of these proposed amendments are attempts to check the extraordinary powers currently being exercised by the federal judiciary, which are often contrary to the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives at the state and federal levels. The following proposed Constitutional amendments currently before the Congress specifically focus on moral and religious issues:
It is intentionally very difficult to enact and ratify a Constitutional amendment. An amendment must be approved by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by conventions in three-fourths of the states. This difficulty was intended to make amendments rare and to preserve the stability of the government.
James Madison, who was the father of our Constitution, understood that men could not effectively govern themselves without a clear understanding of the Biblical doctrine of man’s inherent sinfulness. As a result, he drafted the Constitution so that no one branch of government was given absolute control over the others and so that a rigorous system of checks and balances would protect the people from tyranny. The following provisions demonstrate this basic theological understanding:
When the first Congress, assembled after the Constitution was ratified by the states and took effect in September 1789, one of the first acts of the legislators was to ask the President…
[T]o recommend to the People of the United States, a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed, by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of Government for their safety and happiness.
More than 200 years later, we should share this same spirit of thanksgiving and prayer, particularly as we consider that James Madison and other Founding Fathers described the successful drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution as a miracle which could only have been brought about by Divine intervention.
All Americans, and especially Christians, should also carefully consider the advice of our first two Presidents as we celebrate our continuing Constitutional government, which has served us so well for these past two centuries.
President George Washington said in his Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789:
[T]he propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.
President George Washington said in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Finally, John Adams, our second President, warned in 1798:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
As Christians, it is our duty to maintain the moral and religious foundation on which our society was built and for which our Constitution was drafted. We must work hard to resist the efforts of those who would tear down the moral fabric of our society and undermine the true intent of America’s Founding Fathers.
A good first step to defending the Constitution is learning what it actually says. A second good step would be to pass that knowledge along to your children, grandchildren, and fellow citizens. Finally, a good third step would be to thank God for the Constitution that we have the privilege of living under in this nation. Then also pray that the spiritual and moral intent of the men who wrote the Constitution would be revived once again in our land.
Thats what jury nullification is supposed to be about. No matter what laws get passed, if the people refuse to convict, then they are indeed at the top of the pyramid.
Thats how it's supposed to work, anyway.
Whether Judicial Supremacy is "logical" or not, this doctrine is not dictated by the Constitution. Congress' impeachment power is the check on the President's power.
I don't disagree with that, but it's no longer reality and never will be again.
Says you.
Fine. Overthrow the government. I'll watch.
To their credit, the Supreme Court has never challenged Congress's power to limit their jurisdiction.
All congress has to do is reassert their Constitutional authority over the courts. The Judiciary has usurped powers that don't belong to them. It's time to take that power away.
What we need to do is tell everyone who knows nothing of the constitution that the constitution puts limmits on the government...and does not allow the government putting limmits on the people.
We must tell everypne that when the government says they are going to allow us to do this..or tell us to do that.....well......they damend well can't because the constitution does not allow it.
Bump for later
Excellent post. Certainly everyone should reread this from time to time.
The time honored pledge to defend the Constitution is honored only in the few seconds it takes to say it. Politicians abandon it with in minutes thereafter.
I agree with you that you can't understand how the Constitution applies in real life just by reading it. Not even the framers could agree on what it meant, not even at the time it was written. It's full of compromises and gaps that had to be filled in over time, not always very satisfactorily.
A lot of the arguments about "strict construction" vs. "living breathing etc." are just a way of saying "I am right and you are wrong." Scalia is as bad as any of the rest of them in pretending that he's a "strict constructionist" when he really means "my interpretation is the correct one." They all do it. They always have.
For example - the author of the posted article says that "the Constitution relied on the Bible." Well, that's not anywhere in the Constitution, and there are plenty of sources that beg to differ. Argue about it all you want, it's still just an opinion.
Conveniently packaged as if it were factual in the hope that you are easily bamboozled, especially when you read something you want to believe because you like what it says.
Much more than that, if you count all jurisdictions.
On the other hand, back in the old days, when lawyers only had Story/Storey on the Constitution and Black's Common Law and a book on equity and a book on pleading, they winged it a lot. Not just the lawyers, but the judges. They made up stuff as they went along.
Lots of weird opinions, but you probably don't study old case law much, is my guess.
Good lordy, is that true. I think most Americans think that our Founders were one big wise committee that came up with this thing in some spirit of compromise and God-given wisdom. Cripes, Aaron Burr shot dead the guy on our $10 bill in 1804.
We did extremely well in coming up with our Constitution, and while I won't argue that it's being followed precisely today, it's reasonably close. We're probably doing much better than expected. If we assembled the same guys in 2005 to draft a constitution, I'm afraid of what it might look like.
Given the same circumstances, they would make the same document. We have amended the Constitution when necessary. If people cannot understand simple words and they come to diametrical positions using the same words, there is no hope for humanity.
I'd like to hope that they'd (or we'd) come up with a remarkably similar document, but those guys never envisioned the Industrial Revolution. Nor could they.
Things have changed. If someone wants to be a strict constitutionalist and mean it, find where it allows the government to build the US Air Force. It doesn't, of course, having been written more than 100 years before air flight began.
It really doesn't envision a standing army, although you can twist the words to allow it.
I don't know what a new constitutional convention would come up with. I'm about 85% content with the one we have, even though we've messed with it quite a bit.
Well, you would quibble over a name? What do you expect the armed forces of the United States to be wielding? Muskets? The U.S. Air Force is an outgrowth of the Army Air Corps. We'll just roll back its name and make you happy.
Clause 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
You have a stronger case against the Department of Education.
Bump and thanks!
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