Why The Constitution Is Essentially Dead and How to Fix It


$10 print


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Description: 2 hr. DVD presentation by Joel M. Skousen at America's Freedom Education Week, Utah Valley University, September 2010 ($10)

In this two hour speech Mr. Skousen lays out the crucial evidence that America's leaders and the courts only give lip service to the constitution. In part one, he outlines how they disregard it whenever it gets in the way of the government's hidden agenda to erode American liberty. Worse, the courts are refusing to back up the constitution on issues that impinge on most individual and states rights. They are also troublesome in their refusal to sanction police abuse, unconstitutional wars, illegal government surveillance, or any and all government illegal acts that have been put under the seal of National Security—all prosecutable offenses.

In the second part, Mr. Skousen takes up the issue of restoring the constitution and why that is impossibile under the existing language that is too general and imprecise and inextricably tied to hundreds of thousands of court precedents—which we can't beat. You tell any sitting judge or lawyer that you want to "restore the constition" and they just laugh at you: "It's still in force, so what is there to restore?." You respond that you mean, "In the tradition of the founding fathers." But even one of the liberal Supreme Court justices claims he believes in strict constructionism and the founder's intent. He's lying, of course, but it still brings up the point that we can't argue our way to victory based on the current imprecise language that is correct in principle, but insufficiently specific to keep the intent of the founders from being eroded.

Mr. Skousen does NOT suggest a constitutional convention—which constitutional conservatives could never control, but rather a unique approach that builds a new foundation upon a rewriting of the constitution in tight legal language while still maintaining the principles of the Founders—among ourselves first, and then to the nation. Only in this way can we make the insurmountable problem of legal precedent go away—we make them argue on our terms with newer tighter language, not theirs which they and the courts control. You can preview much of Mr. Skousen's legal philosophy in the Law and Government section.