Ronald Reagan LOVED Constitution Day

by Mike Church (from MikeChurch.com)

Ronald Reagan LOVED the Constitution and in fact, issued Constitution Day Proclamations on every Sept. 17th that he was in office! Were it only so today. 

Most people will give some sort of "really, today is the Constitution's Birthday!? Yeah, whatever" or ".... hmmm, that's cool" response when learning of today's historical meaning. This is unhealthy and highly inappropriate behavior for a country who has the luxury of historical idiocy precisely because of that document's success.

Ronald Reagan would have none of this nonsense. Reagan knew the importance of the Constitution as more than just a benign document that "guarantees my rights". Reagan saw and believed that the Constitution was the crowning achievement of the Revolutionary generation.

The KingDude Library for Founding Theory and Common Sense Conservatism presents the U.S. Constitution, HERE in text form for your review. 

The Articles of Confederation, drafted in August of 1776 and revised in 1783 were a miserable failure and the new American Republic was faced with the prospect of becoming like Europe, with powerful factions (states) warring against one another for supremacy.

Such was the task taken to Philadelphia in April of 1787 by the Constitutional Convention and the founding fathers who were missing Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both of whom were serving abroad in Paris and England respectively.

Here's Ronald Reagan's Proclamation on Constitution Day 1981.

Proclamation 4858—Citizenship Day and Constitution Week, 1981
September 16th, 1981
By the President of the United States of America - A Proclamation

Daniel Webster once wrote, "We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land—nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution."

September 17, 1981, marks the 194th anniversary of our Constitution. Its Framers scarcely could have conceived of the timelessness of the document they so carefully drafted. They prepared a Constitution to meet the needs of a fledgling nation. Yet today, amid the complexities of the twentieth century, that same Constitution, with only several amendments, serves a nation whose territory spans a continent and whose population exceeds two hundred and twenty-five million. With the passing of each year, it becomes increasingly evident that, in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, our Constitution will "endure for ages to come."

The Constitution establishes the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary, and through a deliberate allocation of authority, it defines the limits of each upon the others. It particularizes the liberties which, as free men and women, we insist upon, and it constrains both Federal and State powers to ensure that those precious liberties are faithfully protected. It is our blueprint for freedom, our commitment to ourselves and to each other.

It is by choice, not by imposition, that the Constitution is the supreme law of our Land. As we approach the bicentennial of this charter, each of us has a personal obligation to acquaint ourselves with it and with its central role in guiding our Nation. While a constitution may set forth rights and liberties, only the citizens can maintain and guarantee those freedoms. Active and informed citizenship is not just a right; it is a duty.

In recognition of the paramount importance of the Constitution to our Nation, and in recognition of all who have attained the status of United States citizens, the Congress by joint resolution on February 29, 1952 (36 U.S.C. Section 153), designated September 17th as Citizenship Day, and by joint resolution of August 2, 1956 (36 U.S.C. Section 159), requested the President to proclaim the week beginning September 17th and ending September 23rd of each year as Constitution Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, call upon appropriate Government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on Citizenship Day, September 17, 1981. I urge Federal, State and local officials, as well as leaders of civic, educational and religious organizations to conduct ceremonies and programs that day to commemorate the occasion.

I also proclaim the week beginning September 17th and ending September 23rd, 1981 as Constitution Week, and I urge all Americans to observe that week with appropriate ceremonies and activities in their schools, churches and other suitable places.

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this 16th day of Sept. in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eightyone, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and sixth.

RONALD REAGAN

Happy Constitution Day

By Peter Wehner

On this day in 1787, delegates to the Federal Convention completed their work (which began in May) and voted to approve a new Constitution, which was submitted to the states for ratification (which occurred on June 21, 1788). Now the oldest written national constitution in the world, the British statesman William Gladstone described it as “the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect.” It was also on this day that Benjamin Franklin, who by then was in his 80s and seldom participated in the constitutional debates, delivered a wise and moving speech in which he said this:

I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die.

If you wish to read more, please follow this link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/359046

Constitution Day: Byrd's Latest Highway to Nowhere

By Brian Domitrovic

[The following, originally published on The Center for Vision and Values in 2005, is republished here by permission of the author.]

I drive through West Virginia all the time, and it’s hard to give directions there.  You always find yourself saying, “Take the Robert Byrd out to the Robert Byrd, and make a left onto the Robert Byrd.”  It seems like every road in the place is named after ye olde Senior Senator.

It’s long been known that Senator Byrd is a king of pork, a veritable stud of the Golden Fleece.  But did you know that the stuff now comes with strings attached?  As everybody in the entire universe of American education has learned in the last few weeks, thanks to something the Senator snuck into a funding bill late last year, every educational institution in the United States that receives the slightest hint of federal dollars has to dedicate one day to teaching the Constitution within the octave of Saturday, Sept. 17 – the Constitution’s anniversary, apparently.

And I mean the entire universe of American education.  Last Friday, The New York Times had fun reporting that a beauty school in Philadelphia and a massage-instruction outfit in Michigan were scrambling to comply with the Senator’s latest unfunded mandate.  At least that’s not scary.  One imagines that Rockefeller University, for example, which is strictly a medical school, and soaked with National Institutes of Health money, is cutting curriculum this week in its brain-surgery program to check Senator Byrd’s latest box.

Now what is so wrong with teaching/preaching the Constitution in deference to the wishes, nay the requirement of Senator Byrd?  Nothing, so long as we realize that Constitution Day, as we’re supposed to call this intervention into the ordinary September curricula of America’s schools, is an object lesson in how irrelevant the Constitution has become in the governance of the country.  As every schoolchild knows, the Constitution specifies powers granted to government balanced by immunities held by persons and their immediate forms of association, viz., the states.