We have a great Constitution, and next Sunday, Sept. 17, we celebrate its 230th anniversary on “Constitution Day.” But which Constitution will we celebrate?
Among the ingenious features of our national government’s operating manual are its separation and limitation of powers and its built-in checks and balances. But one often-overlooked virtue of our Constitution is its relative simplicity. Think about it: The blueprint for the most powerful nation on the planet can be easily published in a pocket-sized pamphlet that is lighter than a deck of cards and can be read and understood by the average citizen in the space of a half-hour.
Today, however, upon spending the requisite half-hour to read our Constitution, the average American would conclude that he or she had missed something, judging by the vast discrepancy between the limited national government described in the Constitution and the actual operation of our government today.
The pocket Constitution says that all the legislative powers it grants are vested in Congress. Yet, we live beneath the weight of 95,894 pages of rules and regulations enacted not by Congress, but by bureaucrats.
The pocket Constitution delegates no power over education to the national government. Yet, today we have a …
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(The opinions in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Southern Nation News or SN.O.)