Happy Constitution Day!

On this date, September 17th, in 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed our Constitution. Celebrate by reading your Constitution with your children and sharing what you learn with your friends and family. If we don’t know how our government is designed to function, we won’t know when our political leaders are misrepresenting it.

When I was being trained as a bank teller, the way we learned to recognize counterfeit bills was by handling the real thing so often that we knew immediately if a bill was different. The same principle applies to the Constitution; if you don’t know what it says, you won’t be able to tell when it is being undermined. At the bottom of this post are a couple of good links for online copies of the Constitution and explanatory notes. I’m sure you can easily find more.

I’m not going to print the whole document here, just the preamble to whet your appetite:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Remember that in the original, those first three words, We The People, were written in huge letters because the founders wanted to remind us from the very start that this republic was not formed by a ruler or ruling class. It is up to ‘we the people’ to protect and defend our legacy.

I was going to try and give you a sort of ‘crib notes’ version of the Constitution, but decided I couldn’t do it justice, and that most readers here already know far more than I do. Instead, I encourage you to look over this brief outline as a reminder and preparation for going to one of the websites listed below.

Article 1 describes the responsibilities and structure of the legislative branch
Article 2 does the same for the Executive branch
Article 3 does the same for the Judicial branch
Article 4 does the same for The States
Articles 5 through 7 deal with how amendments can be added, federal responsibilities for treaties and oaths and defining ratification of the Constitution itself

The one note I would add here is the importance the founders displayed for the legislative branch by putting it first. This is the most immediate way for the citizens to engage in politics, because the lower house is chosen by the people every 2 years. Unfortunately, Amendment 17 (Senators Elected by Popular Vote, ratified 4/8/1913) undermined the founder’s intent to have the Senatorial body reflect the will of each individual state legislature. Senators are now no longer accountable to the governing bodies of their states. I believe this is a dangerous step toward pure Democracy, rather than the Republic described in the Constitution.

The founders recognized the need for clarification and further protection of individual liberties, which led to the first 10 amendments all being passed on 12/15/1791. They are briefly described as follows:
· Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression
· Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms
· Amendment 3 - Quartering of Soldiers
· Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure
· Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings
· Amendment 6 - Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses
· Amendment 7 - Trial by Jury in Civil Cases
· Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment
· Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution
· Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

I think that a clear understanding of and respect for this last amendment would go a long way towards limiting our headlong rush into overreaching federal control. Unfortunately, our president seems to contradict the intent here, and claim that powers not specifically delegated may be claimed by the federal government, when the amendment clearly states the exact opposite.

The entire Constitution through Amendment 27 can be fitted on 21 typed pages – why do our representatives now need thousands of pages for bills?

These 2 websites are a good place to start your own exploration of this wonderful document:
http://constitutingamerica.org/index.php
http://www.usconstitution.net/choose.html

God Bless America!

PS As long as you're here, please go to the bottom of this page and vote for NNYM in the Pepsi challenge