How to understand the Constitution

[Weston White]

As it has already been stated best by those much wiser than I (as merely a few of many such examples):

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. --Patrick Henry

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. --Samuel Adams

Religion is the solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God. --Gouverneur Morris

Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the Constitution of his country... By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them. --John Jay

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. --Alexander Hamilton

[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering. --Thomas Jefferson

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. --James Madison

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. --James Madison

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. --John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. --John Adams

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few. --John Adams

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. --Thomas Jefferson

Let no more be said about the confidence of men, but bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution. --Thomas Jefferson

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. --Thomas Jefferson

We, the People, are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the Courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who have perverted it. --Abraham Lincoln

[osan]

I disagree. The document is fairly straightforward.

Nowhere did I state nor imply that it was not straightforward. What I did state is that the document is weakly written from operational and implementation standpoints. This cannot be disputed credibly. It is precisely due to the weakness of the structure that those in seats of power have so readily subverted the interpretation of the Constitution's provisions. Those provisions are largely sound but the framework upon which they hang is lacking in terms of defenses against the perfidies of clever and determined criminals whose generations have so very successfully usurped for themselves the very powers and authorities the document forbids. The fault, of course, lay not entirely with the structure of the document, but primarily with the citizens who have stupidly tolerated the crimes of the Branches.

The idea it has to be, and should be "interpreted"

Let us be clear that in the strictest sense all instruments of communication require interpretation. The standing question is not whether it is needed, but rather what interpretation is correct. Here I agree with the sources cited in the article that the simplest and most straightforward and intuitively obvious interpretation is best. This, however, also becomes something of problematic because different people carry differing senses of intuition. Because it can be impossible to know whether an outwardly expressed interpretation of what a given passage means is honest or disingenuous, establishing a standard of judgment must be undertaken with the greatest care in terms of how it is specified such that it is itself open to only one interpretation. I have studied for several decades the issues of semantics and it is clear to me that sufficiently clear, complete, and precise communication is a difficult endeavor under the best circumstances and that very few people are capable of it.

to be understood is largely a liberal myth foisted on the people.

So-called conservatives are equally guilty. I agree that there has been a long and successful effort to convince people that the Constitution holds mysterious meanings that only the initiated may divine. It is, of course, pure lies. The Constitution is written in plain language, but there are a few severe errors of construction that have left us in our currently sorrowful state. The Commerce Clause is an excellent example. It was simplistically constructed and has therefore been wide open to opinion. The term "commerce" should be defined in the document.

Another severe error of construction lies in the use of the term "welfare". The errors are not large in number but those who have seized upon them have done so to great advantage for them and great damage for the rest of us.

Sadly to many fo us believe this as opposed to following The Constitution exactly.

The problem there lies in our willingness to remain uneducated and to trust "them" with stewardship of our liberties.

The shame lies squarely at our feet.

[Czolgosz]

Very good read, thank you. I will add that I am in strong agreement with the philosophical spirit engendered there. However, I must disagree with the assessment of the document itself as being one of the best written instruments to issue from the minds of men. The US Constitution is in fact a rather weakly written document. This assessment is borne out in the reality with which our so-called "government" treats us daily in an ever increasingly miserable and niggardly fashion. This is not to imply that even a greatly improved version of such a document could not be similarly subverted, but would in any case make the subversion much more difficult to carry forth.

...

Completely agree.

[Weston White]

Well if you truly believe that, then it is truly a wondrous happening that there our Forefathers had the foresight to bother righting the Federal Papers, which are 85-letters providing legal evidence in arguing the original intent and breadth of our U.S. Constitution. Therein all confusion and doubt has thus been wiped away, much “like spirits at the dawn of day.” See: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html

[Democrat4Paul]

You imply these are mutually exclusive. In any event, you can do whatever you wish. Nobody is going to force you to become well versed as it is an impossible task when one is unwilling. Have your martini. Have five. We don't care. Just stay out of our way as we are in no humor to tolerate the corrupt, the willfully stupid, the apathetic, or the parasites looking to ride our coat tails to better living.

I must apologize. It was meant to be humor which perhaps did not bode well? I thought a bit of levity may be in order just for the sake of it.

I am well versed in a good number of things. But I don't take myself all too seriously. Nor the simple words or misplaced humor of others.

Carry on, men. We all have our interests and opinions of things. I meant no offense and am sorry if some were taken. I suppose this is very serious discussion around here, so I digress.

[Douglass Bartley]

Thank you all for the very intelligent comments, even Democrat4Paul, , whose ID seems to be an oxymoron, though nonetheless welcome. I think I'll take his advice and have a Martini.

[osan]

Well if you truly believe that, then it is truly a wondrous happening that there our Forefathers had the foresight to bother righting the Federal Papers, which are 85-letters providing legal evidence in arguing the original intent and breadth of our U.S. Constitution. Therein all confusion and doubt has thus been wiped away, much “like spirits at the dawn of day.” See: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html

The problem is that the Congress ignores them. SCOTUS ignores them except when convenient to do otherwise, and as I recall they are in the habit of reminding the world that they hold no force of law, same as the Declaration.

[osan]

I must apologize. It was meant to be humor which perhaps did not bode well? I thought a bit of levity may be in order just for the sake of it.

Ah, humor. I did not get the sense of it. Pardon me please for being thick.

Carry on, men. We all have our interests and opinions of things. I meant no offense and am sorry if some were taken. I suppose this is very serious discussion around here, so I digress.

No offense taken. I just have little use for boot lickers. Did not take you specifically as one of those, but was making a general statement in response to the perception of apathy. As nearly impossible as I know it is to believe, I too am imperfect.