Executive Summary

Executive Summary

I would be willing to wager your cut of the stimulus package that you, and most Americans nowadays, have been brushing up on their Constitution and related founding documents. I know I have been re-reading the stuff we were forced to read in high school Government class because I feel the need to understand how our Country rose to so much greatness in the first place. So by re-reading the founding documents, perhaps I can better understand what the founding fathers had in mind when they birthed our Country, and by so doing, then maybe I can better understand what is happening to our Country today as our greatness is going by the way of fat Sam. One thing for sure, now that I have lived many good years on this beautiful blue planet, when I re-read the Federalist Papers, Declaration of Independence and Constitution, I have done so with a much better understanding and appreciation as an run-down adult than I was ever able to do as a fearless hormone enriched teenager. One of the more important things that struck me while going back over these founding documents, as a run-down adult and veteran of endless corporate presentations, was that, in truth, the Federalist Papers is the real Constitution while the signed Constitution is only the Executive Summary of the real Constitution. This stunning realization is a real revelation because an Executive Summary, as we all know, condenses enormous amount of information, justification, rational and reasoning into the fewest possible words so that the entirety of the subject can be more easily understood without all of the minutia getting in the way of the salient ideas. This revelation can go a long way in understanding why well-meaning people squabble over loose construction or strict construction (living document versus verbatim construal) when interpreting the meaning of the signed Constitution in today’s modern world. I say this because if you rely on the Executive Summary (signed Constitution) to understand the entirety of the Constitution, then the real meaning of the words become subject to interpretation because of a lack of reliance about the rational and real intent of the authors. Apparently the learned members of the Supreme Court either don’t understand the significance of the Federalist Papers or they choose to just ignore the real constitution (Federalist Papers) as irrelevant because the papers are rarely used as a foundation for court rulings. As a matter of fact, most of the references about the Federalist Papers by the Court over the years have been to treat them as historical, but non-relevant documents, suitable for academic study and little else. I believe this to be a monumental mistake. This country has been blessed many times over by the wisdom of the founders, and to ignore that wisdom is not only unwise, it is arrogant as well. Never before in the history of civilization have a people been privy to the reasoning and honest rational that is the basis of their Government and to ignore or not use that knowledge (the Federalist Papers) as a basis for legal adjudication seems to me to be a gross violation of the oath to support and defend the Constitution. For example, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others were well educated and were all students of the history of Governments as well as being knowledgeable with all of the Governmental philosophers, including the philosopher, Marcus Cicero. It was Cicero who advanced the idea in 44BC that man is a creature of nature (God, evolution, or whatever you feel comfortable with) and therefore the nature of man is bound to us all by this reality. Therefore if one were to construct an enduring, just and enlightened Government, that Government would have to accommodate the nature of Man. This fundamental idea is the basis of the Constitution that the Federalist Papers has described over and over with countless references to God and nature having endowed man with certain unalienable rights that must remain sacrosanct if Government is to just and endure. For modern rational thought about how man came to his natural state I recommend “The mind of the Market” by Michael Shermer and my own book, “The Grace of Being”. The Grace of Being tried to give a rational (not a divine or holy imperative) as to how man may have come to be and why his nature is as it is. By the way, both of these books support the American form of Government that accommodates the nature of man for rational, not divine, reasons. Therefore, understanding the constant references to God (substitute Nature, Evolution, spontaneous genesis or whatever you feel comfortable with, for God here) as the endower of unalienable rights goes a long way to interpreting the Constitution as it was intended to be and as the Federalist Papers so clearly delineates. Knowing that the true basis of the U.S. Constitution accommodates the nature of man also makes it understandable why Socialism can never be an enduring or just kind of Government. Socialism always seeks to change the nature of man rather than accommodate man’s nature as it is. This is why all forms of Socialism rely on force to try and change the nature of man to accommodate the lofty ideas of Socialistic Government and so is always doomed to eventual failure. This also makes it understandable why those who seek power always support a Socialistic type of Government because they can hide behind Government in their use of force to obtain the power they seek.