Federalist No. 41 – Janine Turner

Howdy from Texas! I thank you for joining us today and I thank Professor Knipprath for his most insightful essay!

James Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 41 is full of profundities.

“It is in vain to oppose Constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain: because it plants in the Constitution necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.”

I know that James Madison was referring to the defense of the country but I believe this statement is applicable to today’s cultural attack on the Constitution. To oppose the Constitution to serve one’s ego, or one’s personal agenda, is vanity. If fact, it is worse than vanity, it is a misuse of power and with every small misuse, with every defiant gesture disregarding the Constitution or with every action usurping the Constitutional limitations placed on one’s power, one chips away at the Constitution. This defiance infects the Constitution with a germ, a conduit, which multiplies, misappropriates, and jeopardizes our country’s structure, our liberties, and our future.

The Constitution isn’t an ideology to be twisted to fit one person’s, or one’s party’s, ambition. The Constitution is the foundation upon which our country was built and the tracks upon which our country has traveled through days, years, decades and centuries. The engine on this track is the principals and vision laid out in the Constitution. The conductor is the people. To manipulate, dismiss or disregard the Constitution is to derail the train, running it into the edge of a precipice.

Does the future of our country dangle on the edge of a cliff today?

As James Madison says, “A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.” To dismiss the United States Constitution is a bad cause.

“Every man who loves peace; every man who loves his country; every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.” James Madison words and our Constitutional founding father’s actions reflect their belief that the Constitution would preserve America.

Today that preservation starts with the citizen’s knowledge of the Constitution and the Constitution’s  pervasive prevalence in the American culture.

As John Adam’s said, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge of the people.

Spread the word.

God Bless,

Janine Turner

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

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