Needed - A Resurgence of the Constitution

My two high school kids are enrolled in a ten week course on the Constitution offered on-line by Hillsdale College. I've watched the lectures with them, and I'm impressed. It's amazing the love, respect, and understanding Hillsdale's President, Dr. Larry Arnn, and the faculty show toward the United State's Constitution. These are the kind of men I want my kids to learn the Constitution from - godly men who believe that our rights are inalienable gifts from God, that the role of government is to protect those rights, and that all law must agree with natural law and nature's God.

That's why it is appalling to compare their view of the Constitution with our President's. We have never had a President who has so undermined life, marriage, and religious liberty as Barak Obama. He was trained at Harvard Law School and taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago from 1992 through 2004. Yet, he personifies all that is wrong with the Progressive view of the Constitution. Progressives view the founding fathers as almost ridiculously out of date, that rights are granted by the government, and that our Constitution is inadequate to deal with social and political issues, and therefore, must be overridden.

As an Illinois Senator in 2001, Obama declared his disdain for the Constitution in a Chicago Public Radio interview. He complained the Constitution is only a "charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do, it says what the federal government can't do, but it doesn't say what the federal government and the state government must do on your behalf." He expressed that the Earl Warren Supreme Court wasn't "that radical" because it "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution." Isn't that why the restraints are in place? Isn't it to limit the power of government? Is it any wonder than that Obama looks at things like Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech as inconveniences and impediments to his agenda?

Last week, I wrote an article on Obama's attack on Religious Freedom and the Catholic Church. But that was not an isolated act. It is a pattern originating from his view of the constitution. Whether you look at "Fast and Furious" where there was a deliberate effort to erode Second Amendment rights, or the appointment of vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board without Senate confirmation in violation of the Appointments Clause, or running roughshod over contracts and even bankruptcy law in the auto maker bailouts, or Obama Care (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act)that forces citizens to buy insurance, the pattern is there. He believes he can do whatever he can get away with without regard to Constitutional restraints.

His appointment of like-minded judges to the Federal Bench reveals the same mindset. This is true of his two Supreme Court appointments - Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Another example is his nominee to the U.S. District Court of Southern New York, Jesse Furnam. Furnam argued in the Good News Club v. Milford Central School that Christian organizations be banned from Public Schools. He went on to suggest that student's of faith be completely banished from school property and that a "categorical exclusion of that [Christian] speech" is "both a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limitation, consistent with the free speech clause of the First Amendment, and as a limitation mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First amendment." Excuse me? Banning Christian speech is consistent with, and even required by, the First Amendment? Give me a break. But this is typical of re-constructionist attitudes.

But how else can you explain the crazy decisions coming from the courts? How else could they find a right to abortion hidden within the words of the Constitution? How else will they ever find a right to same-sex marriage? Do you see? Who we elect as President and their philosophy of the Constitution makes a huge difference. It sets the course of the courts for decades to come. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift from God?" I fear many in the highest levels of government and the courts no longer have that conviction.

Even congress got in the progressive act last year with the Defense Re-Authorization Act. It allows American citizens on American soil to be arrested and detained indefinitely without charge or trial if they are accused of terrorism. That's scary. We are to be treated as enemy combatants. Except that violates the First Amendment (Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law) and the Sixth Amendment (the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation). So much for sticking to the constitution. We ought to be afraid.

According to Laura Hollis, Obama "has no respect for the structure of the United States Constitution, nor any intention of acknowledging the limits to government deliberately drafted into it; limits that are a function of the rights the constitution expressly identifies as inherent to human beings generally and vested (at least by virtue of this document) in American citizens in Particular." Patrick Henry said, "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." We are seeing that happen.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg made headlines recently in an interview with an Egyptian television station advising them how to draft a Constitution. She said she was "operating under a rather old Constitution," and advised, "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look to the constitution of South Africa."

But, why is the oldest written constitution in the world not good enough? As Paul Kengor says, "It is based on timeless values and universal rights that work, that are true. It has been amended less than 30 times in 220 some years. It is the most stable, successful, remarkable constitution in history, bringing together a vast array of peoples, and assimilating them into history's most prosperous, awe-inspiring nation." Our Constitution is a primary reason we are such a great nation. Shouldn't we demand it be upheld?

Chris Cox of the National Rifle Association writes, "This year's election is a choice between the America our founding fathers established and a radically different America that Barak Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsberg envision." He is right. What this country needs is a resurgence in our respect and adherence to the United States Constitution. Where do you stand?