BIll of Rights Continued: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part 8

This is a monthly series throughout 2026, the Semiquincentennial year. You can see the other parts here:

·       January: The Declaration 

·       February: Preamble to the Constitution 

·       March: Article I: Lawmaking 

·       April: Article II: Executive Branch 

·       May: Article III: Judicial Branch 

·       June: Bill of Rights 

·       July: Happy Birthday, America! 

In our discussion of rights, back in June, we talked about what is a right, so we can recognize what we’re dealing with. Because a lot of Americans have been confused about that for a century or so.

And we covered a bit of history related to the Bill of Rights, and how we got those first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.

Then we talked about the first of the five rights in the First Amendment: the right to freedom of religion.

So that leaves the other four in that amendment, and a number of others in the remaining Bill of Rights. We’ll see what we get through today.

The other four rights in the First Amendment are:

·       Freedom of speech.

·       Freedom of the press.

·       Freedom to peaceably assemble.

·       Freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Last week we talked about the pandemic a bit—and a little bit of the 5^th Amendment (which was invoked 111 times by Fauci in that Senate hearing). And it’s interesting to note that all of these First Amendment rights were abridged during the pandemic.

The Constitution guarantees us that government will not abridge these rights—and yet government did anyway.

Our discussions here are intended to inform us, so that we don’t blissfully go along with whatever government officials say. Because government is fire, and it needs to be carefully contained, or it gets out of control and burns. In real terms, rather than metaphorical, government is full of humans, many of whom are motivated by power and greed, and they work for those motivators, rather than for the good of society. Some—maybe even the worst—work for the power and money with the full conviction that they are doing it for our own good, even when they’re doing it against our will.

So, about those guaranteed rights.

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Happy Birthday, America! Celebrating the Semiquincentennial Part VII

The 250^th Birthday of our country is a big deal. Most countries don’t even have a birthday they can identify. And while our US Constitution still has another eleven years before it hits 250, the average constitution in world history lasts only 17 years. We’re more than 30 times the average age. So we’re celebrating!

This series of monthly posts began in January. Here’s the series so far:

·       Part I: The Declaration 

·       Part II: The Preamble to the Constitution 

·       Part III: Article I, Lawmaking 

·       Part IV: Article II, The Executive Branch 

·       Part V: Article III, The Judicial Branch 

·       Part VI: The Bill of Rights, mainly 1^st Amendment Religious Freedom 

So, we’ve been doing some learning in our monthly celebration posts. But this month, with the actual birthday this very Saturday, I’m taking one post to focus more on the celebrating than the historical record—although there are some good places to go for your American history learning with your families this summer. I recommend PragerU videos (no cost), and Glenn Beck’s Torch has a “Summer of 250 Study Guide,” free for subscribers, with original songs for each of the Bill of Rights, and plenty more to make our nation’s founding interesting. 

For adults, I continue to recommend Hillsdale College courses, probably starting with Constitution 101. And, again, I recommend this 1989 video of the making of the Constitution, A More Perfect Union.   Anything from Wallbuilders, with David and Tim Barton, is also good; they have books, videos, museums, and more. Here’s a video from a couple of months ago that just popped up for me, about the signers of the Declaration.  Also, I think this weekend the Young Washington movie comes out; I haven’t seen it, but I’m hopeful that it will be good. Washington was an extraordinary person.

And, while we covered the Declaration of Independence back in January, do yourself a favor and take the five minutes to read it sometime this weekend—preferably within hearing of young people.

Celebration

Back in 1976, at our bicentennial, we had a lot of local things going on. I was in a choral group of young adults; I was still 17, but had just graduated from high school, so I qualified for the young adult group at church. We had a director who was studying to become a director, which he accomplished shortly afterward. The only song I remember singing was “Fifty Nifty United States” originally by Ray Charles. We had choreography and everything. I’ve since had my daughter and a homeschool group perform that song. I haven’t found a good video/audio version that wouldn’t be improved by your singing it yourself in your family, so I won’t link to any. But here’s the sheet music. It’s worth learning. It’s pretty fun. And the states in alphabetical order will forever stick in your mind.

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The Bill of Rights: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part VI

We’re reaching the halfway point—and approaching the actual July 4^th birthday—in our celebration of the 250^th birthday of our nation. So far we’ve celebrated by walking through our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble and first three Articles of the Constitution, covering the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

If we were simply walking straight through, we’d get to Article IV on through VII of the Constitution. Maybe we’ll come back to these in more detail, but for now let’s just summarize those articles:

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; 20 states so far have voted to go ahead (including my state of Texas), out of a needed 34.

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 representatives of the states at the Constitutional Convention, where the document was written and revised.

Next come the Amendments. There are 27. The first 10 are what we call the Bill of Rights. And that’s the topic for today’s post. Even so, we might not cover all 10. I’m going to go through a little history and background and at least cover the First Amendment. And since there could be books and books written on the First Amendment, we’ll mostly just get to the first right in the First Amendment.

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The Judicial Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part V

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday. Here are the previous parts:

·        Part I: The Declaration of Independence

·        Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution

·        Part III: Lawmaking

·        Part IV: The Executive Branch

In our Part V today, we’re getting to Article III of the Constitution, which covers the judicial branch of the federal government. That is, the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

The Supreme Court is somewhat seasonal. It is typical for the session to choose, in late summer and fall, what cases it will hear for the year—and the year is numbered by when the process starts, so we’re currently still in the 2025 session. They will hear oral arguments for those cases throughout the winter and spring. And they make their rulings by the end of June. That’s a general rule. In reality, they can take up an urgent case and rule on it quickly at any time. And they aren’t required to wait until June to rule on any case; they can rule when they have a decision ready. And sometimes they hold a ruling until July or so. It just typically piles up until June, with rulings coming out in multiples the last couple of weeks. It feels a bit like a sports tournament, with results coming down to the wire and everyone paying close attention.

Article III, Sections 1-3

Let’s do our due diligence and make sure we understand the actual wording of this relatively short article of the Constitution.

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Preamble to the Constitution: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part II

 

image of the US Constitution Preamble from Wikipedia

This is Part II of a monthly series, the way I’m celebrating our country’s 250^th birthday. Last month, in Part I, we went over the Declaration of Independence. This month we’ll begin looking at the US Constitution, covering just the Preamble.

First of all, let’s note that not all countries have a birthday. The US does: July 4, 1776. We chose the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, separating the 13 original colonies from Great Britain’s colonial rule.

The Revolutionary War was underway already, begun April 19, 1775, at Lexington and Concord. And it continued until September 3, 1783, nearly 8 ½ years later. By then the country was functioning under a rather loose document, the Articles of Confederation. The new independent colonies were tied together as the states’ league of friendship, a perpetual union, but loosely defined.

Reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 2025,
at Jesse Jones State Park, in Humble, TX.
I played music, in costume, for the celebration, but I wasn’t in the reenactment.

There were, you might be surprised to learn, ten presidents of the United States of America prior to George Washington. But during their terms, the presidency was much weaker, and their administrations not too memorable. The central government, such as it was, did diplomacy and territorial disputes, but couldn’t manage to raise funds, regulate commerce (including between and among the states), or get delegates to assemble to work out issues.

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