An Ode to the Constitution

Yesterday marked the 230^th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States of America.  On September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Convention came to a close.  One by one, each of the thirteen states ratified the document; beginning with Delaware in December 1787 and ending with Rhode Island in May 1790.  Let’s take a look at some of the most important provisions in the Constitution and the attempts of the radical left to do away with them.     

 

After the 2000 and 2016 elections, the Electoral College has become one of the Democrats’ least favorite provisions of the Constitution.  Even before the 2016 Election, a bunch of states were trying to form the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.   This group of states would automatically grant their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of how the state voted.  Currently, ten reliably liberal states totaling 165 electoral votes have signed onto the Compact.  That’s 105 electoral votes short of the 270 needed to win a Presidential Election.  The Compact has no legal force until it reaches that magic number.  Hillary Clinton has become one of the loudest critics of the Electoral College since her loss to President Trump last fall.  She can brag about winning the popular vote all she wants, but that’s not how the United States chooses its President.      

 

Liberals apparently need a little refresher on the purpose of the Electoral College.  The original purpose of the Constitution was to create a government uniting the thirteen diverse colonies.  The founding fathers spent a long, hot summer in Philadelphia with no air conditioning trying to hammer out a document that all thirteen colonies would find acceptable.  In other words, they definitely were not snowflakes. Had today’s Congress been given the task of putting together a document to unify the Thirteen Colonies, we would probably still live under British rule.    

 

One of the biggest battles involved deciding how to assign members of Congress.  The larger states obviously wanted the apportionment based on population while the smaller states would have preferred each state having the same number of representatives in Congress.  The Founders decided to make everybody happy by making the United States Congress a bicameral legislature; with a Senate consisting of two members from each state and a House of Representatives, where each state’s membership was determined by population.

 

A similar battle took place when deciding how to cast votes for President.  The small states did not want the large states to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the Presidential Election. The Founders thus created the Electoral College, which guaranteed each state at least three electoral votes. The number of electors assigned to each state is equal to the number of Senators and Representatives in Congress.  The results of the Electoral College almost always mirror the results of the popular vote.  In all but four times in United States History did the winner of the popular vote fail to capture the highest number of Electoral College votes.   

 

Unfortunately, some on the left want to “give up” on the Constitution.  If liberals ever had a chance to rewrite the Constitution, they would probably make sure that the First Amendment would not protect “hate speech” and abolish the Second Amendment altogether.  They would also work to abolish due process for cops accused of shooting African-Americans and college students accused of sexual assault; paving the way for mob rule. 

 

Anyone who watched the exchange between Senator Dianne Feinstein and Amy Barrett, a Catholic judicial nominee to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, would have the impression that the First Amendment no longer guaranteed the free exercise of religion.   Feinstein complained that “When we read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.  And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for – for years in this country.”  Something tells me that the mainstream media would have lashed out at Feinstein had she directed that comment at a Muslim or a Jew.  For the record, liberals adhere closer to their dogma than most Catholics adhere to theirs.  Don’t think liberal dogma played no part in the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges.

 

It’s not that the Founders did not want religion expressed in the public square, they did not want the state to force everyone to subscribe to a particular religion.  The Founders wanted people to have the ability to practice their religion without interference from the state.  In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, King Henry VIII established the Church of England after the Pope refused to grant his request for a divorce.  The Founders also did not want a continuation of the religious persecution that took place in early colonial times.  In recent years, liberals have latched on to an incorrect understanding of “Separation of Church and State” by attempting to remove every reference to a higher power from all aspects of American life.

 

For years, a debate has taken place between the left and the right about the best way to interpret the Constitution.  Many on the left believe that the Constitution is a living and changing document that should be interpreted and reinterpreted with a modern eye.  “Living Constitutionalists” believe that constitutional interpretation must evolve as the society evolves.  They also believe that current judges cannot know the intent of the Framers because a collective group cannot have a single intent.  Many on the right prefer originalism, which argues that judges should interpret the Constitution as the framers intended.  Originalists see the Constitution as a binding contract whose principles can be changed only by constitutional amendment, not through judicial interpretation.  Currently, the Supreme Court of the United States consists of four living Constitutionalists, four originalists and Justice Kennedy. The debate over the role of the judicial branch came up in the confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch, where Senator Feinstein proudly proclaimed herself a firm believer in the Living Constitution theory. 

 

An intense debate also exists as to whether or not Courts should “make policy.”  Judicial activists see making public policy as a natural part of the purpose of the courts in our nation.  Advocates of judicial restraint are uncomfortable with judges’ immense power of judicial review.  They believe that the courts should not be policy makers but instead make only purely legal decisions.  As Ann Coulter once said, “liberals see the Supreme Court as their backup legislature, giving them all the laws Democrats can’t pass themselves because they’d be voted out of office if they did.”      

 

While seventeen amendments have been added to the Constitution over the years in addition to the Bill of Rights, the framework of the Constitution has served our nation well for nearly a quarter of a millennium.  Our mother country, England, does not even have a Constitution; while France has “ripped up” its Constitution several times since the French Revolution.  The United States should continue to honor its Constitution as a sacred contract between the government and its people.  Happy belated Constitution Day!