thank you!!! it is an honor to be here standing in sacred shoes on holy ground great men created the...

THANK YOU!!!

• It is an Honor to be Here

• Standing in Sacred Shoes on Holy Ground

• Great Men Created the Framework of Freedom that We will be Discussing

• Countless Men and Women have Fought and died to Defend that Freedom

• Now it is up to Us to Preserve It for our Children

THANK YOU!!!

• Each of You for Committing your Evening

• You have likely Committed Much More

• How Many of You have Served our country in the Military? Thank You!!!

• I Owe It to Everyone here to Make this Time Worth Your While

• I Promised that I would Make The Constitution Easy

GOOD NEWS FOR YOU!

• I Plan to Do Just That

• When You Leave Here You Will Understand It Better than You ever have– AND

• You Will Have Everything You Need to Continue Your Studies with Confidence

BAD NEWS FOR ME!

• You Already Have Everything You Need to Continue Your Studies with Confidence

• You Don’t Really Need Me

• In Fact My Job in the next Couple Hours is to Prove to You that You Don’t Need Me

• But Since You are already here…

• I Will “Speed Up” Your Discovery Process

• I Will Make The Constitution Easy

ABOUT ME

• Author of The Constitution Made Easy

• Writer for The Constitutionalist Today

• Speaker at Tea Parties (and similar events) Nationwide

• Alumnus of The Master’s College and Biola University

• Studied Literary Interpretation and Translation

THE CONSTITUTION MADE EASY

• Original Constitution Written in an Older Style – Like a King James Bible

• Modern Version can be Helpful – Like a New International Version

• Hence My Book

• But You Can Read and Understand Everything Important in the Original

• Skip the Words You Don’t Understand


• But You Can Read and Understand Everything Important in the Original

• Skip the Words You Don’t Understand– Won’t Affect Your Overall Understanding

• Letter of Marque and Reprisal• Bill of Attainder

– These are just Details – Read On!


• KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING

• Go In the Front Door

• Believe What You Find

• Learn a Few New Definitions

• Follow the Outline

• Seek out the Wisdom of the Ages

GO IN THE FRONT DOOR

• The Back Door is Looking at History from Where We Are Now

• How Can We Do it Any Differently?

• Circle Around Behind It– A Few Years, A Few Decades, A Few

Centuries– Study the Customs, the Language, the People

• Then Follow Them Forward to the Events

GO IN THE FRONT DOOR

• Everything Leading Up to an Event is CONTEXT

• Everything that Follows after an Event is CONSEQUENCE– An Election or a War or a Super Bowl Victory– If We Want to Know How it Happened: We

Study the Events that Led up to it– What Happened After may be Interesting; but

it is not Context

CONSTITUTION CONTEXT

• England• Pilgrims• Colonial America• Revolutionary War• The “Confederation” Period 1781-1789• Treaty of Paris 1783• The “Constitutional” Convention• The Ratification Period


• What About “Founding Era Practice”?– Supreme Court sometimes Looks to this– Useful because we assume that the founders

would follow their own design– Can be helpful, but is not exactly “context”– 10 to 20% value compared to events leading

up to Ratification – Negative Example is “Sedition Act”


• Sedition Act– Made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous,

and malicious writing" against the government or its officials. It was enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801

– Signed by John Adams – Clearly Unconstitutional on Several Grounds

BELIEVE WHAT YOU FIND

• When Any of You Read the Constitution You Actually Understand It Pretty Well

• Then You Doubt Yourself• It Doesn’t Make Sense in the “Context” of

what You See and Read Every Day– “There must be another Constitution (or

another part of it) that I haven’t read.” -- or– “I guess the reason that the Supreme Court is

needed is to make sense of all this.”

BELIEVE WHAT YOU FIND

• It is not Your Understanding that is faulty;

• It is Theirs

• We Can Prove it– Once you have seen things the way they

really are, you will never be able to see them any other way again.

BARRIERS TO BELIEF

• Projection: Attributing your own ideas, feelings or attitudes to other people.

• Assuming that the words or actions of others come from the same feelings you would have if you spoke or acted that way.

BARRIERS TO BELIEF

• Denial: Refusal to admit the truth or reality.

• Unwillingness to believe that people who dress so well and speak so earnestly could be as evil as they would have to be if they were doing this on purpose.

OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS

• Occam’s Razor: The least complex explanation that accounts for the known facts is to be preferred.

• Either our Federal elected officials do what they do because they just don’t know any better; or they do it by design.

• Once you consider the possibility that those in power only care about remaining in power, the picture gets clearer.

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES

• Possessed by our Founders

• Lost for a Hundred Years

• Readily Available Today –

• ONLINE!!!


• Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

• Thomas Jefferson


• There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

• John Adams


• From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.

• Daniel Webster


• It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution.

• The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

• James Madison


• Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

• Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

• James Madison


• The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

• Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

• James Madison


• It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

• The Founders did everything they could to guard against it.

• They placed strict limits on Power.

• They added a Bill of Rights.

• They Required a Solemn Oath.

• They Intended to Bind Government so that it did not Bind Us.


• The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

• Thomas Jefferson


• Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to safeguard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

• Daniel Webster


• KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING

• Go In the Front Door X

• Believe What You Find X

• Learn a Few New Definitions

• Follow the Outline

• Seek out the Wisdom of the Ages X


• Now we are going to learn a few new Definitions, while going through parts of the document, paying attention to the Outline.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

• What Is It?

• It Is a Binding Legal Agreement (Contract)– The Parties Are The Separate States, The

People in Those States, and the Newly Re-Created United States Government

• What Does a Legal Agreement Mean?– It Means What the Parties to the Agreement

Meant for It to Mean at the Time that They Agreed to It.


• What Does It Mean?• What Did the Parties Mean for It to Mean?

– To Form a “More Perfect Union”– A Stronger Alliance of Independent Nation-States

• The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, The Treaty of Paris and The United States Constitution refer to the “States,” often by name.

• “United States” was intended to be Plural and is used that way every time in these documents.


• What Does It Mean?

• What Did the Parties Mean for It to Mean?– To Form a “More Perfect Union”– More Perfect Than What?– More Perfect Than Our First Constitution– A Stronger Alliance of Independent Nation-

States– Stronger, but Strictly Limited (Cabined)


• How Do We Know That It Was To Be Strictly Limited?– Internal Evidence (The Text of the

Constitution)• Article I, Section 1, Clause 1: “herein granted”• Article I, Section 8: “The Enumerated Powers”• 1.8.18: “…the foregoing Powers…”• Article 6, Section2: “Laws… in Pursuance thereof”• 10th Amendment


• How Do We Know That It Was To Be Strictly Limited?– External Evidence (The Ratifying Documents,

Comments of the Writers, Other Underlying Documents)

• Notes of the Convention• Federalist Papers• Anti-Federalist Papers• Ratifying Documents


• What Does It Mean?• What Did the Parties Mean for It to Mean?

– “General Welfare” Means the Equal Well-Being of the Member States

– How Do We Know?• Internal Evidence (The Text of the Constitution)• External Evidence (The Ratifying Documents,

Comments of the Writers, Other Underlying Documents)

– Articles of Confederation, Articles 3 and 8


• The Partial Listing of the Unalienable Rights of Citizens– 1.9, 4.2– The Bill of Rights– The 9th Amendment in Particular– Amendments 11-27


• Compare and Contrast the 9th and 10th Amendments– 9th Amendment is NOT Exhaustive– A Partial Listing of Our Rights– 10th Amendment IS Exhaustive– If it is not listed, it is not Theirs– Together the 9th and 10 Amendments are a

Summary of the Founder’s Intent


• Summary– The Constitution is a Contract or Agreement that

bound together 13 (now 50) sovereign Nation-States in a mutual defense pact like NATO, and a free-trade zone like EEC or NAFTA ( A More Perfect Union).

– It also gave the central government limited powers to do certain things that the States could not easily or reasonably do for themselves (General Welfare).

– It also describes, and promises to protect, our freedoms as citizens (Blessings of Liberty --Unalienable Rights).

– But what do we have today?


• Summary– But what do we have today? – Today we have an unlimited central

government that can do anything it pleases.– States are Puppets.– Public Servants have become Masters. – Citizens have become Subjects.– Rights have become Privileges.


• Summary– But what do we have today? – Today we are in the middle of a mudslide

toward Marxism. – What can we do?


• Summary– What can we do?

• We can do more of the same and expect a different result.

• Or we could try something different.


• Something Different– Read and Understand The United States

Constitution for Ourselves.– Explain It to Everyone Who Will Listen.– Defend the Basics of Limited Government and

Unalienable Rights.– Demand That Our Elected Officials Honor

Their Oath.


• Something Different– Fight like our lives depended on it.– Fight like our children’s lives depended on it.


• Something Different– Ronald Reagan – A Time For Choosing –

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

thank you!!! it is an honor to be here standing in sacred shoes on holy ground great men created the...

Documents

constitution easy slide

context slide

confidence slide

translation slide

easy original constitution

sedition act slide

ratification period

easy writer