What is The Constitution Study About? The Constitution Study is based on a quote from Founding Father John Jay: Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country, and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated, and be the better prepared to defend and assert them. Mr. Jay helped negotiate and signed the treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary war, he was in the Continental Congress that debated the Constitution, wrote several of the essays supporting the Constitution that became known as The Federalist Papers, and was appointed by George Washington as the first chief justice of the supreme Court fo the United States. And he believed that every member of the state, every citizen, should read and study the Constitution. He equated doing so with knowing our rights and the ability to defend and assert them. I wrote the Constitution Study both to encourage everyday Americans to read and study the Constitution, and to help them do so by explaining the concepts in casual, everyday terms.
You did not go to law school. How did you learn about the Constitution? As John Jay said, everyone should read and study the Constitution, not just lawyers and judges. I’m reminded of an old Star Trek episode. The Enterprise visited a world that had developed almost exactly like Earth, but did not avoid the nuclear war that we had. One group, called the Yanks, worshiped a document. They considered it so holy, that only the chiefs could read it. It was event allowed to be quoted in public. Only an obfuscated name was used, the “E Plab Nista”. Kirk, after figuring out that the “E Plab Nista” was actually “We the People” from the Preamble of the Constitution, gave an eloquent speech about how the document wasn’t just for the chiefs, it wasn’t for a ruling class, but it was for everyone. Just as the characters in this episode had slurred the mean of the words We the People, the American people have done the same by treating the Constitution as something that can only be understood by someone with a law degree. I contend that a law degree makes it much more difficult to understand the Constitution. Every lawyer I’ve asked has told me that they did not study the Constitution in law school, but judges opinions about it called “Constitutional Law”. If you have spent your career placing the opinions of judges above the supreme law of the land they swore to support, would you not find the contradictory information in the original document harder to accept?
Where did you get the idea for The Constitution Study? I was driving home from a Bible Study when I heard a report that 36% of those surveyed could not name a single freedom protected by the First Amendment. This angered me. How could we have become so ignorant of the rights we claim to cherish? How could our education system have failed us so badly. Then the idea hit me. Why can’t we study the Constitution the way my friends and I had just been studying the Bible. Hence, The Constitution Study. However, it wasn’t until a friend of mine convinced me to start a study at our local public library that The Constitution Study was truly born.
What does The Constitution Study do? There’s a quote from John Jay that is at the heart of The Constitution Study: “Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country, and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated, and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.” We are working hard to bring make this happen. By encouraging people to read and study what the Constitution says. Providing tools and encouragement to teach it to others. And by helping people to recognize and defend both their rights and the rights of others.
How can people learn about the Constitution for themselves? There are copies of the founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist & Anti-Federalist papers available for free online. I encourage everyone to start by reading the Declaration and the Constitution. There are several podcasts and websites, including my own, that discuss Constitutional issues. People can find those resources work best for them. I recommend sites like Wallbuilders, Kris-Anne Hall, The First Amendment and Tenth Amendment Centers are good places to start.
Where can people find out more? Where can they get the book? The best place to find information about The Constitution Study is our website, https://constitutionstudy.com. The book will available on Amazon starting May 4th. There is also a pre-release sale at the website http://constituitonstudy.com/book.
