The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land. Ralph Waldo Emerson

19 April 2010

Becoming A Constitutional Scholar

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  Thomas Jefferson


Today--April 19--marks the 235th anniversary of The Shot Heard Round The World, when colonists from Massachusetts fired on British regulars on the Lexington green west of Boston and so fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War.


Beginning tomorrow--20 April 2010--you can participate in a great national call to join that patriotic effort and become a Constitutional scholar. Led by the actress Janine Turner (whose most prominent role was as the lead in the hit show Northern Exposure), a challenge has been placed before the American people to read and understand what our Founding Fathers wrought during those remarkable 17 weeks in the city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.


Never before had a nation been spoken forth from the minds and hearts of men elected for such a purpose. And today--some 225 years after its creation--the United States Constitution stands as both a symbolic as well as a practical model of individual freedom for nations around the world.


But our freedoms are being abrogated by the federal government--not just by the Obama Administration, but by the Supreme Court, the Bush Administration, the U.S. Congress, and the various agencies and bureaucracies that operate the government and enforce the laws that Congress makes with statutes which are increasingly overbearing, intrusive, and even confiscatory.


I will offer one simple example--and I will refrain from picking on the present Administration (though the examples after just fifteen months in office are legion): on June 22, 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London ruled in favor of the city's power to condemn a man's private property under eminent domain--not to build or widen a highway or to build a dam or some other public work--but in order to transfer private property from one private owner to another so that the latter--a developer--could build a downtown improvement project, including a waterfront development tract of 91 acres. (Ironically, five years after the ruling, the developer has been unable to get financing for the project and the site of the former Kelo property stands vacant and unoccupied--generating zero tax revenue for the city of New London.)


The Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that the city of New London could condemn the property under the "Takings" Clause of the Fifth Amendment. So what would you have done if you were on the Court? Chances are you have no idea what the Takings Clause says. (Candid confession: As of this writing, I don't either.)


And that is exactly why the effort of Ms. Turner is so important. I urge you to go to the Constituting America website by clicking on this link: www.constitutingamerica.org .  Sign up on the right hand side. 


You can read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers (written most prominently by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as John Jay).  Reading assignments of about three pages per night will be assigned, and the readings will be discussed in an accompanying blog by invited Constitutional scholars.  And you can also participate, by simply offering your own thoughts in the public discussion section.


I invite you to join me in answering the call of Thomas Jefferson. Let us not be ignorant, or else we will no longer be free.

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