For Congressional Representation, It Was Not Between Black and White

Since slaves had no voice whatever in the selection of Southern Congressman, counting the slave population at full strength would only have give white Southerners a stronger pro-slavery contingent in Congress. Scoring points today and being serious are two very different things. It should also be noted that the Constitution’s distinction in counting people for representation in Congress was between slave and free, not black and white. Free blacks were counted the same as whites—and free blacks existed before the Constitution existed.

Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, pg.155

Government MUST Obey the Constitution

None of our problems are beyond our constitutional order’s power to solve. What is it we need, after all? We need a Congress that acts like a legislature rather than a company of moralizing performance artists. We need a president who acts like a responsible chief executive rather than a drunken king. We need a judiciary that acts impartially in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the land rather than in a partisan manner. And we need to disperse the political power that is now concentrated in the hands of the Washington establishment.

In short, the solution to our problems is not to scrap or transcend the Constitution, but to start obeying and applying it again. Under that document, “We the People” already possess every power we need to reestablish majority rule, minority rights, democratic accountability, equal justice under law, and national sovereignty.

Kevin D. Roberts, Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order, Imprimis, October 2024

The Only Foundation

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

John Adams, 21 June 1776

Celebrate the Founding Fathers

Each generation must pass on the appreciation for the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution and the liberties it protects. Today, while too many seek to cancel out Founding Fathers, we celebrate them.

Senator Tim Scott

Pay Attention, Americans!

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.

John Adams, in letter to his wife Abigail on 7 July 1775

For Whom Was Our Constitution Written?

Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams, 1798, Cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, We Will Not Be Silenced, pg.61

The Constitution is Dying

Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.

Joseph Sobran

The Need for Uniform Naturalization Laws

The Constitution affirms [the] concept of American citizenship. It includes only one reference to immigration, where it empowers Congress to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization.” It’s worth pondering a couple points here.

First, what’s that word uniform doing? The Constitution uses the word only three times, when requiring uniform rules for naturalization, bankruptcies, and taxation. These are things that could either knit our Union together or blow it apart—taxation by the central government, the system of credit upon which the free enterprise system depends, and the meaning of citizenship. On these, the Framers insisted upon a uniform, nationwide standard. Diverse habits and laws are suitable for many things in our continental republic, but not for all things. In particular, we can only have “one people” united by a common understanding of citizenship.

Second, the word naturalization implies a process by which foreigners can renounce their former allegiances and become citizens of the United States. They can cast off what accident and force have thrust upon them—race, class, ethnicity—and take on, by reflection and choice, a new title: American. That is a wonderful and beautiful thing, and one of which we are all justly proud. Few Americans love our land so much as the immigrants who’ve escaped the yoke of tyranny.

But our cosmopolitan elites take this to an extreme. They think because anyone can become an American, we’re morally obligated to treat everyone like an American. If you disagree, you’re considered hard-hearted, bigoted, intolerant, xenophobic. So the only policies that aren’t inherently un-American are those that effectively erase our borders and erase the distinction between citizen and foreigner: don’t erect barriers on the border; give sanctuary cities a pass; spare illegal immigrants from deportation; allow American businesses to import as much cheap labor as they want. Anything less, the elites say, is a betrayal of our ideals.

But that’s wrong. Just because you can become an American doesn’t mean you are an American. And it certainly doesn’t mean we must treat you as an American, especially if you don’t play by our rules. After all, in our unique brand of nationalism, which connects our people through our ideas, repudiating our law is kind of like renouncing your blood ties in the monarchical lands of old. And what law is more fundamental to a political community than who gets to become a citizen, under what conditions, and when?

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest