We Are Still s Constitutional Republic: A Short History of the Constitution

 I have tried over the years to educate people on the Constitution and what it means, what the Founders wanted, and how it is being perverted today. I do not go into this lightly. I have read the Constitution of the United States several times and refer back to it whenever I cite it. I have read the Federalist Papers and cite them at times. I have read the Federalist Farmer's letters responding to the Federalist Papers. I have read Madison's notes that he took while the debates were going on during the Constitutional Convention. I refer to all these documents when talking about how our government was set up, how it is supposed to be run, and how our government today is not using that so-important document as written and intended. Am I a Constitutional scholar? No. I am a high school graduate with very little education above that.

I was, actually, a licensed tax preparer in Oregon for about five years. In the great state of Oregon, to become a tax preparer it is a five week course on taxes and how to prepare them. After the course, it is a five hour test covering everything you need to know to prepare individual, small business, and corporate taxes. I passed that grueling test with 15 minutes to spare and had a grade of 89%. Not the brightest bulb in the box but smart enough to please the state of Oregon.

I don't pretend to know everything. I do make mistakes. I am a Constitutional originalist that believes it is a legal document set in stone. It is the Law of the Land. A judge does not 'interpret' the law on a whim or by the political ideas of the day. Over the last almost two and a half centuries politics have changed over and over again. One administration believes one thing and the next another. Slavery was alright when the country was founded. It isn't today. It took thousands of lives and a civil war to end that. Who was the champion? Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified on 6 December 1865.

Women couldn't vote until Rep. James R. Mann (R, IL) proposed to the House in favor of the Susan Anthony Amendment allowing women the right to vote on 21 May 1919. Overwhelmingly supported by the House, Congress passed the 19^th Amendment on 4 June 1919 and the Women's Suffrage Amendment was certified on 26 August 1920.

At one point it was illegal to sell alcohol by Constitutional law. That law was revoked several years later by another amendment to the Constitution.

The winds of change never cease. To change the Supreme Law of the Land it takes a two-thirds majority in Congress and three-quarters of the States to ratify the change. The Founders didn't want to make it easy to change that document because they knew that politics changed dramatically over time and on a whim. They were not stupid by any stretch of anyone's imagination. They feared a strong central government; especially since they had just finished fighting a long war to free the colonies from just such a tyranny.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Declaration of Independence.

I put some of that text into bold because that is some of most important parts of the Declaration. Even before we became a free and independent nation the Founders knew that government should not be changed easily or by the winds of political climate. That is why I believe the Constitution is iron-clad, cast in stone and unchanging without a long, drawn out process to make sure that the changes being made aren't for 'light and transient causes.' Congress seems to think that the Constitution is nothing but a piece of parchment that is no longer necessary and, in some cases, a nuisance to their causes.

Presidents, at times, don't like the hindrances of the separation of powers and tend to legislate from the Oval Office through Executive Orders. Congress has used the Supreme Court to legislate that which wouldn't pass in open debate and voting in the Chambers. This is not what the Founders envisioned. Not even close. A small, weak central government with enumerated powers. All power not delegated to the Federal Government is in the hands of the individual states and, most importantly, The People of the United States.

I have listed the powers of the Government on previous blog posts so I won't do it here. Let it be said that we, the People, have been lax in our oversight of government. We have allowed the Federal Government to become bloated and all powerful. I've heard it said many, many times over my sixty-plus years: “You can't fight City Hall.” All I can say about that is; “Like Hell you can't! They work for us! Not the other way around.” Every single government employee is a direct employee of the citizens of this nation. It is our tax money that pays them. Our elected officials have only so long before it's time to re-elect them or kick them to the curb. For the non-elected employees, well, we still pay them.

There are laws that have been passed that we, the citizens, immigrants, visa-holders, and visitors to this country have to follow. We have law enforcement to uphold those laws. If you break them and get arrested, well, you won't get far by telling that sheriff, deputy, or beat cop that he's fired. It don't work like that. There are ways to make your voice be heard. Most of the time it's in a courtroom. Sometimes it's through grievances to the City Council. In the end, it is us, the citizens of the United States that hold the ultimate power. We, the People. Too bad that isn't taught in school anymore.

The school system is broken by an all-powerful government. We are forced to attend school and most times it is a government-run school. That being said, what are we taught? We are taught only what the government wants us to know. Civics isn't taught. Government isn't taught. The Constitution isn't taught. If they are, it's only in passing. It's much easier to take away things that you don't know you have. It's all written down on a piece of parchment that is 234 years old. Ratified on 21 June 1788, The Constitution of the United States of America is still the most important document in American history.

There were thirteen colonies that became the first states of the new nation. Now, 248 years later that number has grown to 50 states and several possessions (Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Island, American Samoa, Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Johnston Atoll, Wake Island, and a few others). The country has grown since the Revolution of 1776 but, the Constitution has not and should not. The Founders knew that their new nation would not stay confined to the original thirteen but, they also knew that there needed to be a set way to govern no matter how big the country became. It's all in there. In black and white.

In today's world if you aren't 'woke' then you are some kind of racist, misogynist, xenophobe, homophobe, transphobe, or a host of other -phobes. People don't know if they are a boy or a girl and want to be called 'they/them.' Boys are competing against girls in sports because they can't win against other boys. Men pretend to be women for reasons that are most time nefarious. Racism has made a comeback that makes the race riots of the 1950's and 1960's look like a trip to Disneyland. Major corporations are condoning and even helping indoctrinate our children into the gay/trans world whether they like it or not. Schools are perpetrating trans agenda upon any child that mentions that they don't feel like the sex they are. Critical Race Theory is being shoved down the throats of school children from a young age through college. Marxism and Socialism are being taught as the best political/economic system and Capitalism/Individual freedoms are being taught as racist and unfair.

Who is behind all this anti-America agenda? Who is forcing this ideology upon the people of the nation? Who is to blame? We, the People are to blame because we haven't stood up and asserted our God-given rights and authority over an elected government that shouldn't have the power that it does.

Please, for the sake of America, read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Federalist Papers, the Federalist Farmer, and Madison's notes. Read them till you understand just what it was that the Founding Fathers of this nation intended us to be. IF you do pick up a book that has these documents and you DO read them, please, read them carefully, intentionally, methodically, and with the idea that you were right there when they were being written for the first time. Pretend that you were involved in the debates over what should and shouldn't be in the Supreme Law of the Land. Pretend that you were standing alongside General George Washington overlooking his ragged troops, weary from fighting an almost impossible battle against an army that had never lost. Pretend that you were there when Lincoln gave his speech at Gettysburg.

Remember this, the 56 men that signed the Declaration of Independence vowed their fortunes, their honor, their very lives to a cause that became the Great Experiment – a country that was of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, and for the PEOPLE. A Constitutional Republic with an elected government that would change on a regular basis. Not a democracy because democracies always fail. But a representative government. “We are the rightful masters of government.” A. Lincoln.