A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties
Excerpt: Ben Carson's 'A More than Perfect Union'
— -- Excerpted from "A More than Perfect Marriage: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties" by Ben Carson, Doctor, with Candy Carson, with permission of Sentinel, an banner of Penguin Publishing Group, a partition of Penguin Random Business firm LLC. Copyright © American Business concern Collaborative, LLC., 2015.
Affiliate 1:
"Don't cheat your neighbor by moving the ancient boundary markers fix up by previous generations." - Proverbs 22:28
I have been privileged to travel to more than l countries, and each fourth dimension I render I am more than thankful that I was born in the United States. Many ungrateful people like to denigrate our nation. They human action as if America were the source of evil in the world and a nation to be escaped, but the large number of people risking life and limb to enter this nation illegally tells a different story. In this nation, people know they can realize their dreams through their own efforts. We can motion to any role of the state without permission from someone else. We have freedom to say any we want to say and to believe whatever we want to believe.
These liberties nosotros savour do non exist by blow. They have not been preserved by luck. Nosotros have a governing certificate, the Constitution of the U.s.a., which outlines the freedoms of the American people and establishes a nation where those freedoms are protected and honored. Written carefully past wise men, our Constitution has stood the test of fourth dimension, propelling America from a position of obscurity to the highest acme of the world in record fourth dimension.
Every bit governments of other nations accept risen to ability, get tyrannical, and fallen, the Constitution and its defenders have kept America on a steady class, free from a authorities that imposes the will of elites on the people. Countries like France, which has had many revolutions since its initial escape from monarchy in the eighteenth century, have struggled to find stable freedom, just the Constitution has lasted. Guarded carefully by watchful citizens, it stands business firm against tyranny of any sort, just information technology is flexible enough to allow for compromise when necessary. Governed by this document's vii manufactures, Bill of Rights, and later amendments, America has been prophylactic, stable, and prosperous for more than than two hundred years and is going potent.
Students of history will recognize the achievement that the Constitution is. Non only has it lasted, merely it inverts the tyrannical patterns that have guided most nations through history. Instead of working to protect those in ability, the Constitution defends the people from government encroachments. Instead of setting up ways to monitor citizens, it provides ways of keeping leaders accountable to citizens. Constitutional government recognizes and bows to the volition of a godly, educated population. Under the Constitution, our government follows the model set out by Thomas Jefferson: "A wise and frugal regime, which shall restrain men from injuring one some other, shall exit them otherwise costless to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the oral fissure of labor the staff of life it has earned. This is the sum of good government." American regime has lasted, and our nation has prospered, specifically because the Constitution has kept the government out of the way.
As James Madison said, "If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America—a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it." He and the other founders knew that people naturally tend to endeavour to enhance their own position and ability at the expense of others. This is not a characteristic of one specific race or group of people just is a common weakness amongst mankind in general.
Recognizing the danger of human being nature, our founders wisely created a Constitution that would curtail federal power, building in checks and balances. Just they also knew that a skillful system was not plenty. If the people were not vigilant and knowledgeable about the laws and their ascertainment, the government would expand, gradually insinuating itself into every attribute of daily living and eroding Americans' freedoms. Not many years afterward the Constitution was ratified, Andrew Jackson warned the nation: "But you must remember, my beau citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that y'all must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well every bit in the Federal Government."
Sometimes tyranny begins subtly so that only alert citizens can spot it. Many of the founders feared that like so many other societies before united states, we would non exist vigilant and would let our freedoms to be taken away past seemingly beneficial laws. Thomas Jefferson warned, "Feel hath shewn, that fifty-fifty under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in fourth dimension, and by boring operations, perverted information technology into tyranny." For instance, the authorities may say everyone deserves a higher teaching and announce a program of wealth redistribution in society to make sure that anybody has a fair gamble in an increasingly sophisticated globe. On the surface this seems like a noble goal and could gain a lot of popular support. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it introduces a type of top-downwardly authorities that allows a group of elites to determine what is good for the society. Information technology would be wiser to allow the society determine what's good for itself and what kind of government information technology wishes to accept through ballot initiatives and through their representatives.
Our founders put a dandy deal of fourth dimension, effort, and money into the development of the Constitution. They desperately wanted to ensure that this was not wasted attempt and that our government would remain centered on the people. They fully understood that they themselves were highly educated and exceptionally intelligent individuals who had achieved a great bargain in their own right, but they worked to brand the Constitution simple plenty for everyone. Unlike many of the lengthy and complex bills that are passed by Congress today, our Constitution, not counting the twenty-vii amendments, is less than seventeen pages long. Not just is information technology small enough to fit in a pocket and curt enough to exist read in one sitting, but the Constitution is besides relatively simple and easy to sympathise. From the kickoff, it was designed to be read by the mutual people—because the founders knew that the Constitution was for everyone, non just the aristocracy.
The founders were right to accept precautions. There is a movement among some elite thinkers today to say that the Constitution is as well complicated for the boilerplate reader. Some legal scholars insist that the phrases in the Constitution practise not hateful what they say, and politicians torture the Constitution'due south vocabulary, distorting its meaning in order to farther their own agendas. When an average citizen protests, these elite thinkers answer condescendingly, saying that constitutional scholarship is a matter for experts, not for voters.
Nothing could be further from the truth. While the Constitution is indeed complex, it is simple enough to be understood by anyone with a bones teaching. While many of the founders were lawyers, many of the signers were businessmen or doctors. If they understood liberty enough to write the Constitution, y'all shouldn't have to exist a lawyer to understand it today.
Unfortunately, the elites may be right in saying that amid the average adult population in America, noesis nigh how our authorities actually works is sorely lacking. Compared with the corporeality of knowledge about civics that was required to obtain a heart-school certificate in the late 1800s (during which time public instruction ended with a heart-school certificate), the knowledge of almost adults today is severely deficient.
This ignorance was one of the founders' worst fears. They were uncertain virtually the resolve of the American people to maintain a high level of educational activity and involvement in the affairs of authorities. They knew that information technology would exist impossible to preserve the level of freedom being granted to the American people unless the people themselves were a reservoir of knowledge. John Adams said, "Freedom cannot be preserved without a general knowledge amidst the people." Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be."
Truthful to Jefferson'southward prediction, the biggest threat to the maintenance of freedom in America in our fourth dimension is lack of knowledge. Though almost every American citizen knows that we have a Constitution, few take studied information technology advisedly, and even fewer are standing up to protect it now that it is nether attack. Many Americans have never read our governing document, and many are ignorant of the liberties it guarantees and the procedures it has set upwardly. The good news is that this can be remedied. Education is open up to all, and the fact that you are reading this volume is a expert sign that you are ready to become a more informed American citizen. Perhaps you already know and love the Constitution and but want to learn more nearly it. Or perhaps this is your first effort to educate yourself. Either fashion, you volition observe much to inspire y'all in the following chapters. Yous will learn about the history of the Constitution and about its framers. Y'all will learn almost the Constitution's governing principles as they are laid out in its preamble. You will learn most the construction of the Constitution. About important, y'all will learn what you can do to defend it. After all, it is but through the efforts of millions of Americans similar you lot that our "more perfect marriage" can be preserved for time to come generations.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/excerpt-ben-carsons-perfect-union/story?id=34543844
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