Constitution 101 | Lecture 1

[Music] welcome to this Hillsdale College online course called Constitution 101 my Constitution we of course mean the greatest and longest living of all the constitutions in history the Constitution the United States we study that here because we're mindful of the fact and always have been at Hillsdale that we are citizens and we need our freedom in order to live well and do our work especially the work of a college which radically depends upon freedom of every kind we teach the Constitution to every student here at the college and now we're going to help you learn something about it the other people who are teaching in this are members of our politics faculty I'm a member of that faculty myself and among them all they may have the most knowledge of the meaning of the Constitution and the significance of the changes that have gone on around it and so it should be a privilege for you to watch this and I hope you enjoy it and I hope you read and continue learning about this for as long as you live and teach others to so much I'll explain depends on that there are a lot of details in this course details of how exactly things work and why they work the tales of different understandings than the one that prevails here about those things and so that will involve us in some complications and it'll be helpful I think that we can keep the kind of general points in mind and I'm going to name some of those today in my lecture my first question I'll ask myself and you is what kind of thing are the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution turns out the answer to that is very enriching they're different documents there's an argument that they're opposed there's a powerful argument in the historical scholarship that the Declaration was meant to be a radical document and the Constitution was meant to be conservative and that those people argue that the Declaration is about the rights of us all and the Constitution is really about protecting the privileged well we we think that's nonsense around here and even on its face it's nonsense for one reason at the time exact time the difference independence is from 1776 and the Constitution's from 1787 so they're close together but nevermind there are all kinds of state constitutions written at the same time as the Declaration of Independence some of them signed by people who also signed the Declaration of Independence and they're all like the Constitution the United States in in their structure which I'm going to talk about something that's important so another thing about it is that strikes me as particularly silly I've written a book about this is if you read the Declaration of Independence you will find that it comes in three parts and in the first part it states some universal principles very beautiful and in the second part it contains a bill of particulars in seventeen paragraphs about bad stuff the King of England did which bad stuff justifies the making of America throwing off the old government and adopting a new one and those things are remarkably like the Constitution United States what did the King do wrong well he interfered with the legislature which is a violation of the first step in all government the making of laws but also a violation of separation of powers which is crucial to how the Constitution United States worked so separation of powers is important and then he interfered with the people's ability to elect legislatures in other words representation a key feature of the Constitution of the United States and then he interfered with the judges he would ship people arrest them for crimes and ship them off to England where they couldn't be tried by a jury of their peers nor before judges who are independent of the executive branch which more or less the king was so you see they're writing the Constitution right there if you have a government that does these things then you are justified to rebel against that government and to kill anybody who resists you so it implies the Constitution now what kind of thing that they are different to that Christ Independence and the Constitution they serve different functions they also sound different in a very interesting way the difference independence is really beautiful you know when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them in that a grand expression the laws of nature and of nature's God it's written like that also it's not time bound when in the course of human events that means anytime in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people that means any people anywhere anytime the claim is what's gonna follow in this document is right at all times and so one way to think about the difference between the Declaration and the Constitution is it's a document about ultimate purposes what they call in classic philosophy final causes final causes are the things that we seek above all others the things we would die for and so the representor pence states those and of course those words echo around the world still today even when they're distorted you're gonna learn something about that in this course well the constitution is not quite like that the Constitution is it provides a form of government and when you read it hey you know I've regarded it as beautiful and think I understand why it's beautiful it has to do with its structure which Madison says is the most important thing about it but you know on any given passage right it's full of details like there's a list in article 1 section 8 things that Congress can do well post offices and post roads is among them it's hard to write a beautiful sentence about that no this is a document about how the government is going to work even how it's going to look it looks like a thing that operates in three branches if the if there's a interviews going on in front of the White House which there are everyday on the nightly news there's a picture of the White House in the background because that's where the president works and that's where executive things are done and if there's a if there's something big in the Congress then there's cameras looking up at the Capitol dome because that's where the Congress operates and where the legislation is made and the same for the Supreme Court building in operation the government looks like the Constitution and sure enough the first three articles in the Constitution one of them the first one sets up the legislative branch beginning with the words all legislative power herein granted and one thing you're going to learn in this course is that we don't make our laws through the Congress anymore that's why there can be so many of them and that's why it's impossible to hold to account those who make them except very indirectly and did it's even hard to find out who makes them I think there are a hundred and fifty lawmaking agencies in the federal government now so each of those clauses establish one two three the way the government of the United States looks and so if you think about it you couldn't have any serious activity that did not have a final cause a whole bunch of people cooperating sometimes it risks to their lives suffering and trouble sacrifice that started right at the beginning because the first thing that happened after the Detroits a dependence was we well actually it already happened a bit before we're having a war with England the greatest power on earth and to undertake that you need a big reason you need some ultimate reason and any time people think of their deaths they always think of what they live their lives for that's what the Declaration I'm in Independence is but then on the other hand if you're actually going to have a great government then there's gonna have to be ways for it to operate cuz think what it has to achieve it has to grant power the doctrine of the Detroits independence is that all legitimate power stems from those who are governed no other source but then somehow you've got to get some way to get legitimacy into the things that the government does and have that operate on a routine basis so if you're gonna have a legitimate government you're gonna have a form a recognized way by which it operates and so the Constitution provides that one you could say is the final cause and the other is the formal cause now I'm going to back up a step and ask a question that's prevalent today and that is why should you have any government at all what do you need it for and then we were just over in England as we're making this course and we were celebrating the completion of the official biography of Winston Churchill and there was a couple of young English guys who were working and helping us get around and they were delightful people and I got into long talks with them and they just made the point cuz you know they're having the big debate about whether they separate from the European Union over there or not and that young as a rule don't favor the separation and they said well we're not English we're European and I said dad what if you don't like something the European Union does oh there's a lot we don't like we want to see it reformed and I said good what means do you have to achieve that reform because it's kind of difficult isn't it there's 29 countries I think aren't they they don't all speak the same language how would you have a conversation with a wide body of fellow citizens to establish a thing like major reforms to the government and that's a point isn't it because in the Constitution well in the place in the Federalist Papers which are assigned to read along with this course and I urge you to read them and reread them because they're a great achievement in political thought one of the greatest and one of the greatest American such achievements and in the 51st Federalist Madison explaining why you have to build a constitution that that has precautions in it it has to grant power you have to have that but also it has to constrain power you have to have that and the way he puts the point is what is government but the profoundest of all reflections on human nature if men were angels no government will be necessary if angels were to govern men neither internal or external controls on the government would be needed see what that means he's locating us in the hierarchy of nature down at the bottom of the beasts are the rocks and up at the top are angels and God and if angels were being of being governed although there's a record in the Bible that their behavior is not perfect still it's true that is a common run is probably a lot better than ours and they don't they're imagined as as disembodied intellects and so they don't have all the needs and pressures we have and the beasts they just always obey instinct whereas we're moral beings which means we're called to do right and we don't always and that is actually the reason why we need laws but Madison just makes the common sense points the people who make the laws are people too how do we know they won't make them in their own interest well you need a constitution and it needs to be in control of the governed and so the reason nations and that word nation a comes from the Latin word not hora which means nature and that means that the making of laws is written in human nature and it actually precedes Aristotle says from our ability to talk because the that's a pregnant thing about us that's the big thing about us and so this need for government is fundamental and on the other hand we need to be able to control it and Nations therefore are conceived as natural things where people can understand each other they say they share a common final cause as in the Declaration of Independence which tells us what our nation is for and then they can cooperate with each other to a point and manage a government that responds to their will so it's actually true then isn't it that in this age where we rescuing nationalism for internationalism the detrás independence talks about that and mark the point I've already made it the pursue dependence begins universally it says that everybody has rights every human being the same in every age no matter where and then it says that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed in other words this universal rights that we have they call for government to protect those rights and they call for a kind of government that will be responsive to us it's a remarkable thing I think it's hard to quarrel with the assertion which I make all the time that the greatest of the modern countries is the United States of America well its story is tremendous right because it begins with a new world nobody knew where it was nobody knew what it was until about 18 6 I think it was nobody really knew how big it was nobody gone across the new world and all the way back until about then Lewis and Clark so something happened on this new land and what was it they picked up a civilization it's like in the western movies you know they're often a contest between somebody who's got a law book and somebody who's got a gun and in the towns where the westerns take place there's no capacity at all to produce either a law book or a gun but they know about them because they've come from a well developed civilization and brought it out to the frontier that's what the whole Western movies are just recreations of American history because the civilization mostly of Europe with its understanding of God and its understanding of right and it's learning and its understanding of nature that comes over here and those people brought all that in their minds and hearts what they didn't bring was aristocracy they didn't bring an established elite to run everything what they brought instead was ideas of freedom and equality and so there was this new world and a bunch of people got to take it over and they had because you know the first settlements are about a hundred and fifty years before the Declaration of Independence and that 150 years was a time of great learning one of the most remarkable things that was learned was that most of the early settlers came because of religious persecution and they thought the solution to that was to set up communities where their religion was installed by law and protected and everybody had to practice it and they thought it's a big old country if somebody doesn't like it they can go somewhere else so religious conformity was more or less the rule early on though the idea came to be we don't really have to fight about that first of all we do find a lot about it they were they used to in Massachusetts Bay Colony they used to hang Quakers for coming to town to try to convert people to Quakerism and Quakers or Christians you know different brand and so they thought that through and in the course of that hundred and fifty years they adopted the idea of civil and religious freedom and that's in the deck Royce of Independence right because life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that has to do including with our duty to God and so that religion should be respected but also free that's born that's reaches its perfection in the Declaration of Independence god I should say occurs four times in the Declaration of Independence and it's an interesting thing because it it demonstrates the way they talk of him how important God is and it demonstrates also how important limited government is because God appears first is the maker of the laws of nature nature's God the legislator then he appears as the supreme judge of the world the judge and then he appears as divine providence the executive branch and then he appears up higher up in as the creator or the founder of all things right and the lesson of the difference of Independence is one God is a standard greatly to be respected and worshipped and understood but - you wouldn't combine all those powers in the hand of any any being except God not for men so you see this tremendous opportunity which I can't see myself how would ever be repeated in history because there isn't a new world anymore maybe space but there's nowhere to go like that anymore and so they went there and they got a fifty years to work on it and then they proclaimed a regime defined by these two documents that's one of the most important events in human history in my opinion I say a thing or two about the Constitution because that's important first of all I mentioned that it's divided into groups and there are seven articles in the Constitution United States and the first three set up the three branches of government but then a second thing about it's interesting and that is that it's not an unlimited government there's something called the police power which comes from English common law very old and it's the general authority to legislate for the health safety and welfare of the people state governments in America I have that and that means that if the state if a state government tries to do something you know there are provisions and state constitutions and in the Federal Constitution that forbid them to do many things but the presumption is they have the power to do it if it fits within that common law definition which is very wide whereas the Constitution the United States delegates certain powers to the federal government and just think what a different thing in kind that is like Hillsdale College has Articles of Incorporation and they're very beautiful by the way and we follow them here closely but when it comes to the operation of the colleges it basically grants us the board and me and the staff here power to do anything a college needs to do well the federal grammar is not like that the federal government has article one section eight and and that's a limit on the government you see the the clauses are it's not hard to state what they're about is about National Defense the big job of the federal government the second biggest group is provisions to guarantee a system of national Commerce all over the nation one nation as regards economics contracts are to be respected bankruptcy there's to be a provision for them so that you have to be a legal process before you can get out of your debts but there should be such a process money weights and measures it's gonna be a great nation trading freely inside its borders and that will make the nation strong and nations need to be strong in order to defend themselves and the only other things that are powers given to the federal government are basically to operate in the States on the ground where the federal government has installations so the post office is Federal Territory and the Federal Building there way too many of those now but there's a provision for them right from the beginning so it's a limited government and whatever it does it has to justify by a specific provision in the Constitution that permits it and that's not the strictest rule in the world you know there's leeway but but it's a different kind of thing than to begin on the basis you can do whatever you please the last thing I'll say about the Constitution is what's it trying to do we like to say today if we're conservative minded people which I happen to be that the Constitution is to limit the government but of course that's obviously not true the first thing in this is in power of the government and it's it's all over the Constitution and the documents surrounding it that everybody understood they need a strong government in fact the Constitution itself which replace the Articles of Confederation was written in part because the Articles were failing and the reason they were failing was the government wasn't strong enough to protect our rights there were foreign troops on our soil and we couldn't do anything about it couldn't pay our debts they were riots in the States and they couldn't be put down Madison writes all this up in a really great essay before the Constitutional Convention called vices of the political system of the United States it's in our Constitution reader and so they need a stronger government but they divide it now what is the purpose of the division and you have to think about how profound the division is although it's been much overcome by the growth of the administrative state and the bureaucracy which you're going to hear a lot about in this course it's still true that it's a it's a tremendous achievement because in dividing the powers they arranged for different methods of election of the different parts so the president serves for four years the house representatives serves for two the Senate serves for six the judges are appointed by the President on advice of the Senate the constituencies are different the constituency for a senator is a state the constituency for the president is an electoral college made up of they which you win by majority that's under pressure these days which you win by majority of the electors in in the states and the electors are calculated according to the number of Senators and Representatives each state has so you see what it does it spreads Authority across space and you remember this is the greatest and most extensive Republic in human history and they were trying to unite a continent the full size of which they did not quite know yet although George Washington did name his army the Continental Army so they wanted spread and so the Senate spreads political authority and that means people who live in the very different and widely separated parts of the country all get a say even if they're not very numerous and then on the other hand it spreads Authority across time because if you want to change something in the American government the fastest you can possibly turn the whole government is six years because it takes three elections to elect a whole Senate and the president 2/3 of that amount of time so that means that it places a premium on opinions that we hold firmly and for a long time and Madison makes this point beautifully in the Federalist Papers and more than once in the 49th I think it is he says it is our reason alone that must be placed in control of the government our passions must be controlled by it so we're supposed to think before we act here's another feature of the Constitution in the 63rd Federalist Madison says that this is the first purely representative government in history he's claiming a uniqueness and what does he mean by purely representative he means that sovereign sovereign in England was the king and he was the executive branch the sovereign sovereign in Athens was the free citizens and they were the legislative branch sovereignty the sovereign in America is the constitutional majority but they don't occupy a branch of government we don't control I mean they've introduced the referendum things like that in later years but there's no federal referendum process why Madison thought it would be good for us because you know just like you can't trust the government fully because they're people you can't trust us fully either because we're people too and so we can only act through elections that makes elections important in America and it also means we can't do anything by the spur of the moment the best decisions not being made on the spur of the moment and our state of telling exception to that too the president is specifically empowered to act alone and that's in matters of execution think of the different meanings of that term execution when you've got a war you to act suddenly but laws prevail because of course if the president starts a war and the Congress doesn't like it or if he sends a bunch of troops somewhere they don't have to supply any money for that and the money will run out if they will put a stop to it and they have often in American history and threatened other times so you see the idea is that we have all the power but we can't act except through our representatives and that adds patients and and deliberation to the process and then a last thing the size of the of the United States the fact that it's spread so far the fact that it includes so many people in so many jurisdictions you know the states are supposed to have a lot more authority than they have these days and one of my wishes is to see it restored a lot of other things like that too but when it's spread all over the place let's say you've got ten little conspiratorial friends you know you can if you got ten little conspiratorial friends you can meet in dark rooms and whisper to each other and nobody need find out but what's ten gonna do in a country this says in fact to influence the country you have to cry you have to talk across millions of people hundreds of thousands in the founding millions now tens of millions now and you have to you have to speak across vast spaces and Madison rights that will teach us to be more candid with each other we you know we we love to say that all politicians are liars and I think that's not quite true but it's a rough truth but on the other end think how much worse it would be if they didn't have to talk in front of us and if they weren't free to contradict each other and I I want to close with this point because it's fundamentally important there are just two ways of governing human beings and one is by talking and the others by force because we are the speaking beings this rationality that we have that lets us use common nouns that's what makes us political and so legitimate political systems are always built on talking not on violence they may take violence to install they may require violence to persist than to defend but they must not proceed in their ordinary workings by violence of one citizen upon another and so we have a political system that first of all is met to potat protect our rights which are written in our nature the decisive part of which is our ability to reason and talk but also we have a nation where we're supposed to discuss things and teach each other and learn from each other and I'll go back to the European Union the poles and the Czechs and the English and the French don't really have a good way to talk to each other except through the agencies of the European Union and that means it's very difficult for there to be a culture in which public opinion is formed freely among all of the people who are affected they can't speak with each other routinely their translation programs and lots of people speak more than one language in Europe and yet to talk in your native tongue the tongue in which you've been educated and by which you articulate your best thoughts that's what you do especially with fellow citizens it's become a very great country in the course of its history beyond the imaginings even of the people who founded it who were extremely ambitious people they had the highest possible hopes all right well if that's true there must have been some cause of it but also it's in that final purpose we serve that we have adopted it's a purpose available to all human beings we have adopted it for our own and then finally in this form of government we have under the Constitution which is itself a reflection of human nature and that is why it has worked so well so I'll close with the editorial point well known I think we are doing restore the authority of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence thank you [Music]

Channel: Hillsdale College

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Keywords: hillsdale, college, constitution, con 101, learning, politics, america, brexit, borders, nation, soveriengty, declaration, independence

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Length: 34min 16sec (2056 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019