Revering the Constitution

Constitution Day—the anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution—was September 17, yesterday. But I’m going to continue celebrating for a few days.

The US Constitution
from the National Archives

The Constitution is the basic law of the land. It is NOT what grants us rights; it is the tool we use to protect our rights, which God gave us. If we could identify that difference, it would make a huge difference in how people approach public policy.

The Constitution is a legal document, not a philosophical statement—after the preamble. So it’s not poetic or exciting. But it is profound. If you don’t admire it, you either don’t understand the Constitution’s meaning, or you don’t understand the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

So let’s take this day to honor and better understand the Constitution.

Here’s the basic outline: Preamble, Articles, and Amendments.

The Preamble, which lays out the proper role of national government, is short, and beautiful, so here’s the whole thing:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.

The body of the Constitution is made up of seven articles, most of which are divided into several sections. Here’s a brief summary.

Article 1 lays out the powers of the legislative branch. There are 9 sections, vesting all legislative powers for our federal (national) government in Congress, which is divided into a Senate and House of Representatives, outlining who can serve in the House and Senate, and such things as elections, revenue bills, and other legal details.

Article 2 lays out the executive powers vested in the President. It has four sections, talking about how the president will be elected (the Electoral College), the president’s powers concerning the military, making treaties, and representing our country on the international stage; informing Congress of the State of the Union, and impeachment (removal from office) of the president or vice-president.

Article 3 lays out the judicial powers in the Supreme Court and inferior courts. There are three sections, detailing their powers and the kinds of cases they will cover.

Article 4 covers interstate rules, and guarantees for citizens going state to state. There are four sections, including information about how new states may be admitted, and how the federal government guarantees protection to each of the states.

Article 5 offers ways to amend the Constitution: amendments can be proposed by either two-thirds of both Houses, or two-thirds of the state legislatures can propose an amendment. This option has been talked of more in the past few years, and about a dozen states so far have voted to go ahead (including my state of Texas).

Article 6 talks about paying debts incurred by the national government, and that the federal government shall be the supreme law of the land.

Article 7 talks about ratification of the Constitution, and signatures from representative of the states at the Constitutional Convention, where the document was written and revised.

Then come the Amendments. There are 27. But the Constitution wasn’t ratified until the first ten were included. These are what we call the Bill of Rights. They weren’t originally included, because they were understood by all as a given. But there were those—Virginia led in this—who were afraid if at least some of these rights weren’t spelled out, later generations might try to abridge them (violate them, pretend they didn’t exist).

They were prescient. Not only did that forgetting happen, but even with these rights spelled out, people argue whether or not the government should grant those rights—forgetting that government doesn’t grant them; it only protects them. Think about current riots, from people claiming no one should be allowed to speak things they find offensive, or that they do not approve of. Or claims that religious freedom should be subjugated to popular beliefs about sexuality.

And there has been a great deal of government overreach—taking on authority that is not granted in the Constitution.

We need to return to our Constitution. That is the path back to freedom, prosperity, and civilization. We need all good people to learn the truths our founders knew, and then stand up as our founders did.

We’ll need to start with learning.

I came across a video (see it here) over the weekend, meant for students—probably aimed at upper elementary through middle school. But it’s worth a watch with the kids. The hosts, which include a 10-year-old girl, touring the capitol, and interviewing two senators from the judicial sub-committee on the Constitution: Ted Cruz and and Richard Blumenthal.

If you want something aimed at a little higher education level, try testing your knowledge with Hillsdale College’s quiz on the US Constitution: (here). 

And maybe that will lead you to take their Constitution 101 course, which I’ve recommended before. High school students shouldn’t be scared off by the college label; it’s what everyone graduating from high school should know and understand. In fact, every voter ought to know what’s in this course.

Hillsdale College also has an annual Constitution Day celebration going on, with live streaming on various topics, starting tonight and going through tomorrow. [Schedule here.] I’m especially interested in the “Roundtable on The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom,” at 9:00 AM EDT Tuesday.

available here

If you’re not ready to dive into a college level course, but could handle something about the length of a movie, I recommend A More Perfect Union, produced by Brigham Young University. It’s a beautifully done dramatization of that hot summer of 1786, and the extraordinary men who came together to create our Constitution.

After you’ve done a bit of study, you might want to reward yourself with a bit of humor. Here is Studio C’s frat house version of the founders.

To Secure These Rights

“After theology—economics is the most important science to study

because the two things that impact everyone are God and the market.”[i]

 

The political, economic, and civilization spheres interrelate. If you've come across this blog, maybe you already know that.

In case you’re not aware, Hillsdale College is offering yet another free online course. It’s Constitution 101 again, but with new lectures. Sort of like taking the same class again, with different teachers, so you pick up different details.

Already they have lecture nine available, but I’ve been going through at my leisure and recently listened (and then re-listened) to lecture 5: “To Secure These Rights: Economics, Religion, and Character.” Here at The Spherical Model, the connection between economics and social behavior was bound to perk my interest.

The lecturer is Thomas G. West. This section of the lecture begins about 29 minutes in:

It seems strange to us that a political society whose purpose is to secure life, liberty and property, should concern itself with citizen character. Harvey Mansfield formulates the paradox nicely. “Liberty and virtue are not a likely pair. At first sight, they seem to be contraries, for liberty appears to mean living as you please and virtue appears to mean living not as you please but as you ought.” But, morality is not something that government can choose either to concern itself with or to ignore. The moral law, in the founders’ view, is not intentioned with or supplemental to the natural law theory. It is its foundation. The founders tended to equate the moral law with the law of nature.

A large part of this final portion concerns maintaining the family, the basic unit of civilization:

The connection between laws on sex and marriage and government’s duty to secure the natural rights of all is today probably less well understood than almost anything else in the founding. These laws all had one main object: to encourage people to get married and stay married. The integrity of the family was believed to be necessary to the protection as well as the happiness of human beings: men, women and children alike. The love of married parents for their biological offspring was judged the most reliable motivation for the sometimes unpleasant duties of providing suitable care for children.

Although it was written some years after the founding, an 1836 essay by Joseph Storey, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Madison, sums up the founders’ view very nicely. “Marriage is an institution which may properly be deemed to arise from the law of nature. It promotes the private comfort of both parties. It promotes the private comfort of both parties. It tends to the procreation of the greatest number of healthy citizens, and to their proper maintenance and education…. It promotes the cause of sound morals by cultivating domestic affections and virtues.”

This next portion concerns the definition of marriage today:

This older, child-centered view of marriage has been replaced, in our time, with a sentimental, romantic love view. The idea of same-sex marriage makes perfect sense in a world where marriage has effectively been redefined as a partnership of people who love each other and who feel justified in splitting up if love happens to fade. As marriage collapses throughout the western world, children’s support comes increasingly from more productive men coerced by the state into transferring money either by court-ordered child support or by taxation that funds welfare and other benefits, to less productive mothers who choose to live apart from their children’s fathers.

Professor West doesn’t claim that legislation has redefined marriage; it’s more a matter of pop culture changing the definition through propaganda, and then pushing legal institutions to “stay with the times.” Anyone who says, “Wait, what’s wrong with the definition we’ve had all along,” they get accused of hate and bigotry. The cost for giving in is the decay of the very basic necessary building material of society.

I have a major portion of  the family section of The Spherical Model that relates to the ways of dealing with the results of sex outside marriage, if society is to maintain the integrity of the family. It is helpful, of course, if laws support the family, but it is more essential for families, extended families, churches, and communities, to encourage the correction of behavior, so that the value of family is maintained. And also so that the damage to society from family decay is not transferred onto the larger society.

Professor West describes the founders’ approach to be similar. Laws and policies might seem harsh today, but in reality, harshness only applied when “the misbehavior became open and notorious.” Loving, caring friends and family are better at encouraging valued behavior than threat of legal punishment. But underneath both private and public policy was an understanding of how essential family strength was to economic prosperity and happiness in society.

As I was writing this today, I came across information about a documentary coming to theaters this weekend, called Irreplaceable, about the economic and social value of fathers in the home. Is it time to re-define marriage downward? Not unless you want more poverty and unhappiness for the foreseeable future. Here's the three-minute trailer:

 

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[i] Deacon Patrick Moynihan, Head of LCS [Louverture Cleary School], comments on the importance of teaching economics in Haiti; the quote comes from http://thpspeaks.org/post/81769904394/economics-breaking-the-vicious-cycle-through-education . I found this quote in  Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw’s blog 4-9-2014, http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2014/04/sentence-of-day.html .