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September 17, 2022

Constitution Day, which falls on September 17, is the national observance holiday that most Americans have never heard of. Yet this year, 2022, it may well be our most important holiday to understand, for almost all our most pressing national problems today are a result of corruption and departure from governance and law enforcement consistent with the Constitution. As a result, our country is threatened more now than at any time since seven southern states seceded from the Union and Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861.

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To understand the present peril, it is worth going back in time to appreciate how the Constitution was conceived as both the founding and governing instrument for the United States government.

The War of Independence lasted five long years from 1776 to 1781, with the impoverished, underfunded, underequipped, and undertrained Continental army being mostly on the defensive. It was a miracle that this relatively small American militia could defeat Great Britain — then the most formidable military power in the world.

The second miracle in forming the United States was the drafting of the Constitution some six years after the final and decisive military victory over the British at Yorktown in 1781. By contemporary standards, it is inconceivable how delegates from thirteen extraordinarily disparate states could muster the forbearance and magnanimity to agree on the terms of a new Constitution after only four months of deliberation. With God’s help they accomplished the impossible.

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As good as that Constitution was, it had to be ratified by the states to become the law of the land. And several states withheld support out of fear the Constitution did not protect citizens and states from the inevitable overreach and corruption of federal government power. The hold-out influential and large states — notably Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts — finally agreed to ratify the Constitution on the condition that ten amendments called the Bill of Rights would be incorporated into the final Constitution. This Bill of Rights would define and protect both the people’s natural and unalienable rights and also the separate states’ rights against the abuse of federal government power.

 The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were revolutionary political doctrines because they clearly delineated citizens’ rights and established that these rights came from God and not the state. These rights being then sovereign and unalienable made the people in charge and government’s role subordinate — not the other way around.

Another aspect of the Constitution was that it limited government abuse by creating checks and balances of power between three separate branches of government — the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Another mechanism of check in the Constitution was also to delineate power to be exercised between the federal and state governing authorities.

Frequent elections established by the Constitution provided yet another important mechanism to limit the extent and duration of government incompetence and corruption. This also meant that the most sacred responsibility of citizenship established by the Constitution was and is the right of the people to vote and decide who shall govern.

This combination of limiting governmental power and maximizing peoples’ rights makes the U.S. Constitution unique — the longest-running constitutional democratic republic in human history.

Nevertheless, when determined and dishonest people manipulate elections to fix outcomes to install people who can be compromised or to determine who gets power, any constitution can be fundamentally undermined and circumvented, causing disaster for the people.