The Constitution of the United States

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"The Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself." - Benjamin Franklin.


"This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints toward monarchy, and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? Your president may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed to what may be a small minority." - Patrick Henry, June 1788 to the Virginia Ratifying Convention


"The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution." - Reid v Covert 354 US l, 1957, Supreme Court decision http://www.constitution.org/ussc/354-001a.htm


"Miracles do not cluster. Hold on to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands -- what has happened once in six thousand years may never happen again. Hold on to your Constitution, for if the American Constitution shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world." - Daniel Webster


The Law, The Money and Your Choice 09-02-03


Ask not what your (American) Constitution can do for you, but what you can do for your Constitution! - Julie Kay Smithson, 2003.


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." - The First Amendment, which does not now separate 'Church from State' ... nor ever has.


"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor  prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states  respectively, or  to the people." -10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution


We are not protected by our Constitution as much as our Constitution is protected by us. - J.K. Smithson


The essence of communism is the abolition of private property. -  Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848


"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." --
Patrick Henry


"No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny  this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his  principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.  It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents.  A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law.  If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute." --Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #78


The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were at first present, the members adjourned from day to day until a quorum of seven states was obtained on May 25. Through discussion and debate it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles, the Convention would draft an entirely new frame of government. All through the summer, in closed sessions, the delegates debated, and redrafted the articles of the new Constitution. Among the chief points at issue were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress to allow each state, and how these representatives should be elected--directly by the people or by the state legislators. The work of many minds, the Constitution stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise.
Transcription

The full text of the 1918 Communist Constitution can be read at the following website:
http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/communistrussia/ (Opens in a New Window)