Constitution Alive Section 1, Part 4: Preserving Freedom Through Historical Insights

Unlock the founding principles of our great nation with us as we revisit the U.S. Constitution. You’ll gain valuable insights into the original intentions of the Founding Fathers and learn why understanding these principles is crucial for protecting our rights today. We’ll guide you to educational resources to bolster your constitutional knowledge.

Ever wondered how our Founders envisioned the Constitution's use in modern times? We break it down for you, making this historical document accessible to everyone. Using tools for their intended purposes, we explore the idea of checks and balances, emphasizing how these principles are designed to prevent misuse of power.

And here’s something fascinating: the Constitution was once taught to elementary school children! If young minds of the 19th century could understand it, so can we. Drawing from an 1828 elementary catechism, we illustrate how foundational constitutional knowledge was accessible to even the youngest of learners. Inspired by these historical precedents, we encourage you to explore our archives and share this vital knowledge. Let’s keep the torch of freedom burning bright together—tune in and join the conversation on preserving our constitutional republic.

Chapters

• 0:04 Understanding Original Intent
• 12:04 Intent for the Constitution
• 22:01 Understanding the Constitution for Everyone
• 25:31 Looking Forward

Transcript

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In war, there is no substitute for victory. Let us never negotiate out of fear. We stand undivided, forever united, fighting hand in hand for the liberty we burn, for glory and honor for our sons and daughters, ever mindful of the lessons we've learned, let the torch of freedom burn.

Rick Green

You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics. This is Wall Builders Live with David Barton and Rick Green, and we appreciate you joining us today. You can also join us online at wallbuilders.com and wallbuilderslive.com, as well as Facebook. Get on Facebook and look for us Rick Green, David Barton, wall Builders You'll find our pages there. We'd love to engage in conversation there as well. If you're tuning in today for the first time this week, you're actually joining us in part four of a four-part series on the Constitution. But don't worry, you can enjoy today's program without having heard the first three. But if you'd like to hear the entire series, then visit us online at wallbuilderslive.com. Click on that archive button in the top right hand section and then you'll find yesterday, the day before and the day before that, the first three parts to this four-part series. Now, before we jump back in where we left off yesterday, just to catch you up on where we are, this program is called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. It's about a 12-hour program where we take you to the Wall Builders Library. We bring those books off the shelf, these documents from the founding fathers, we show them to you, we share them with you and we show that original intent of the founders with regard to our Constitution. And then in each segment we take you out to Philadelphia and in the room where the Constitution was framed, in the very place where the Declaration of Independence was signed. In that room we actually teach you on the Constitution. We actually walk through every article, every clause, every section and we share with you the original intent of what the founders intended for that to do, that particular area of the Constitution. So it's a great way to walk through the entire Constitution. Obviously, we can't share that entire 12-hour program in just a couple of radio programs, but we're giving you a little taste of it in a four-part series this week which is coming from segment one of Constitution Alive. So let's pick up right where we left off. Yesterday. We've already covered three parts of this four-part series. We're going to take you right back to Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green.

I mean, how many times have you tried to get people to study the Constitution? And even if you just give them a pocket Constitution, they never open it. What we've got to do is we've got to put some tools in their hands that they can quickly access how this country works and they can quickly access how to be a part of it. So just keep that in mind. I really encourage you actually to dig deeper. Let this be the quick start guide and then go back home and do the more extended classes. Hillsdale College does a great program. The National Center for Constitutional Studies has some fantastic programs. In fact, 5,000 Year Leap I've got up here the Making of America.

I'll tell you a great source. My favorite of all is Ed Meese's commentary on the Constitution. He goes line by line in this thing. Check that out. Heritage Foundation put that out and it's another great tool. There's so many great tools out there, so our goal is not to replace any of them. Our goal is just to try to get people interested in going and doing those things. So that's kind of the concept. Tonight we're going to do the quick start guide to the Constitution, if you will so remember. Our goal is to identify our rights and then know how to protect and preserve them, how to properly do that. So that's our approach number one. Approach number two is we're not going to focus on judicial interpretation, we're going to focus on original intent.

There's another analogy for this one. My mom actually gave this one to me. She was a bank teller when she was younger and she said as a bank teller, I went through all this training and I handled all this money. And she said, rick, they never gave me a counterfeit bill, they never showed me a counterfeit so I could feel it and know what it felt like. She said no, no, what they did was they had me handle the real deal, the genuine article, so much so that when that counterfeit bill came through my fingers, I knew something's not right, because I had worked with the genuine article so much I recognized the counterfeit immediately.

Same thing for us. We're going to study the real deal. We're going to study the Constitution itself. We're going to study the founders and what they said and did and how they acted when they were putting the Constitution in place. We're going to study the actual words of our founding documents, not on what some judge says that he thinks or she thinks that they meant. I think that's what's gotten us off course is we've allowed judge after judge to pontificate on what some other judge said about what some other judge said about what some other, and we've gotten so far off course. When we got, you know, you think about the freedom of religion. Now we got so many tests on what the freedom of religion is or when you violate that, or when the establishment clauses. But I mean, sandra Day O'Connor had her three-part test, then her four-part test and her five-part. I mean everybody's got all their tests right and it's just confusing why? Because we've gotten away from studying the original itself and what the founders did. So our goal is original intent.

Let me give you a couple of quotes from the founders on this. They said, on every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted. And how about? Back to the room? I don't usually get to say that in the class. Let's carry ourselves back to the time. Here we are, in the actual room where the Constitution was adopted. Recollect the spirit manifested in the debate, so what these guys were actually saying right here when they adopted the Constitution. And instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, in other words, instead of taking the words and oh well, today that word means X, y and Z, so this must be what the founders meant or trying to invent some meaning into the Constitution, to try to get an outcome on the judicial decision. Instead of doing that, jefferson says we should go back to the time, study what these guys were actually saying and he said then conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Break

Rick Green

So these guys are going to speak to us tonight. They're going to tell us what they actually said about these different areas of the Constitution, so that we can follow Jefferson's suggestion there. And then Madison, of course, the father of the Constitution. We'll hear a lot from him tonight. He said I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. So, in other words, you're going to figure out what it says. He says you go back to what these guys said when they adopted it and then what happened in those individual states when they had their ratification debate. In that sense alone it is the legitimate constitution. So you want the legitimate constitution. You go back to the beginning of what these guys did. If that be not the guide, so if you go the other direction, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable constitution more than for a faithful exercise of its power. So what do you get? Instead of having a stable constitution and a clear understanding that stays true throughout time, and if you don't like it, you use Article 5 and you amend it. But instead of having that stable constitution, what do we get Three-part test on this, a four-part test on this. Total confusion about what is or is not constitutional.

Madison said come back to the original if you really want to know. He said what a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in the modern sense. So when we think about phrases like general welfare, what did it mean back then? What did it mean in this room? Not. What does it mean to us today? Not what does it mean when a politician tells us what it means. What did it mean to these guys? We're going to talk about that too.

The first in governing this is James Wilson, by the way. Now, this guy, he was in the room both times. He signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. He actually went on to be a Supreme Court justice, one of the first guys George Washington nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. So he's actually an original Supreme Court justice. He said the first in governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it Well, who made the Constitution, guys that were in this room right, the ones that ratified it back home. Those are the ones we got to, if you will, kind of crack open their heads, get inside their mind, figure out what they were thinking, what was the intent? And the last guy I'll give you on this is Joseph Story, supreme Court Justice that wrote about 94% of the opinions. When he's on the court he's actually called the father of American jurisprudence. He said the first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all documents is to construe them according to the sense of the terms, of the intentions of the parties. These are the parties. Folks. We're here, welcome to the party. We're here with the parties that actually gave us the documents and we're going to hear from these guys and find out the original intent, not judicial interpretation. So, number one, it's not exhaustive. Number two, we're going to use original intent, not judicial interpretation. Third thing in terms of our approach is we're going to do something that we don't normally get to do with the Constitution. We're going to take it as amended.

Those of you that have studied it a lot, you probably had some of those frustrating days, like I did when I first tried to study the Constitution. I opened up my pocket Constitution and I said you know? First thing I was curious about. I said I want to know about this electoral college. I want to know where this school is in the Northeast that all candidates go to. I was hoping for a little laughter there. No laughter, can we dub in some laughter there? Camera guys. Okay, a lot of people really think that they think the electoral college is some campus over. You know out here in the northeast that all the candidates come to. No, it's the way we elect the president.

So I said I want to figure out how this thing works. I was always confused by it. So open up Article 2. Start reading about the presidency. Three paragraphs in Guess what? This has been amended by the 12th Amendment. And what's your pocket constitution do? It just underlines what's been changed, but it doesn't tell you what's been changed. So you've got to flip over to the 12th Amendment and try to look at both of them and figure out okay, what actually changed, what does it mean? And then three paragraphs into the 12th Amendment this has been amended by the 20th Amendment. So I got Article 2 open, amended by the 22nd and the 23rd and the 25th amendments. So I got five amendments affecting article two and I'm supposed to. I just went crazy.

I am so thankful for my buddy Mike Holler, mike put this thing together. He did meticulous work to put together this constitution made easy, the tool we're going to use tonight and I am I know you're going to as the as the night goes on, you're going to think this. This green guy is really simple-minded, because I am I need things to be explained, okay. So Mike really helped me with this and he laid out the Constitution as amended. What a novel concept. So the tool in your hands tonight, what you're going to be able to do is flip that thing open and on the left-hand side of the page we get the original.

Because I'm an originalist, I'm not for replacing that language, but we get the original on the left-hand side of the page and then on the right-hand side of the page we get the Constitution as amended. So the blue is all the amendments incorporated into the original and it's in modern language. So that's the fourth thing we get is some plain language. That makes it easy for people that haven't made a big study out of this to actually go and read through the Constitution very quickly. Part of what I love about that Constitution Made Easy is you can actually sit down and read the blue part, the plain language, in about 15 minutes. So people that have never been exposed before. You can hand that to them and say, hey, just sit down and read the Constitution. Just read through it real quick and you'll find some things you never even knew were in there. You're going to be able to clarify some things you may not have been aware of before.

So that's our approach. That's how we're going to do this. We've got a lot to cover in a short period of time and you'll find people say that David and I both we talk about 90 words a minute with gusts up to about 350. I'm going to try not to gust on up to 350 too often In our echo chamber here. I'll do my best to keep the speed down, but we've got a lot of time together and we're going to cover as much as we possibly can. So that's sort of our introduction to the process and what we're going to do. A little bit about our approach we're going to talk about the seeds that were planted here, what the concepts were, because I find it interesting that if you just read the documents and you don't really go back to the philosophy that undergirds them, the philosophy that was put in place, you can get off track very quickly. So we'll be back to talk about the seeds of liberty when we return To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Break

Rick Green

I don't know if you could tell there, David, I was a little excited to be in that cradle of liberty. It's such a cool place to be and you've recorded there several times. It's just something about being where it happened.

David Barton

And it's you know. I just always love looking back at George Washington's chair. Was it the rising sun or the setting sun on that chair, boy Franklin? That's such a cool story, but it's cool to be in that room.

Rick Green

I love it. So one of the things we talked about a lot and we'll talk about a lot more throughout this course is original intent. Right Now, you wrote an entire book on this, a best-selling book on original intent, where you took all these documents in this room and and really shared with us what was inside the minds of our founding fathers. Why is it so important to get that original intent?

David Barton

because that's where you get the most effectiveness. It's really hard to use a screwdriver as a shovel because it was not designed for that so you can work all day long screwdriver, not going to dig something out. You have to know original intent, have to know how it's designed. It's like using the owner's manual if you want the most out of your car, your TV, anything else You're not saying people would misuse the Constitution for something that wasn't intended to be used for.

You know how. We talked at the beginning about human nature and principles, and that's why the Constitution works, because it's based on certain principles. One of those principles is human nature and absolutely it can be and we'll cover this in future lessons but that's why we have checks and balances and separation of powers, and the founding fathers told us about human nature and because of that they put principles in there to keep people from taking and abusing this. It won't stop it if we don't apply those principles, but they gave us some tools by which we can stop some abuse.

Rick Green

I like that analogy, because now it's not just original intent, but original intended use.

David Barton

It's a good way to think of it. It is Intended use. It's a good way to think of it. It is, it is and one of the things. That's kind of a good example that you talked about. If we don't do that right, then you're talking about how we get off track, and you're exactly right. Here's a great example. This is one of the best-selling books in American history. It's one of the McGuffey readers. They came out in the 1830s and grade reader.

And I just open up here to lesson number nine death at the toilet. Wait a minute, I'm not even god, I don't. I have no idea why would they use such crude bathroom humor back in that day? Because back in that day, toilet is where we get the word toiletries , which is like your shaving stuff and your hair stuff. Well, toilet was really your vanity table and that's why we call it vanity.

So death at the toilet is death at the vanity table and it deals with a young girl who is really cocky and pride and arrogant about how beautiful she was and it turned into her demise. Wow. Well, we look at death at the toilet and say I can't believe that you're such crude humor. No, no, you have to go back to understand what they were trying to do. Now, once we understand that the principle is the same, the arrogance and the cockiness and the kind of stuff that they talk about with that girl but it's not death at the toilet, it's death at the vanity table. Her vanity is what destroyed her. So that's the kind of stuff that still works and it does have an impact, and that's why you want to go back and know original intent.

We'll just go back where we started at the beginning with John Jay. These are the six things that we want every single citizen to be able to do when you read and study the Constitution. Number one is read the Constitution. It doesn't take 20 minutes, it's an easy thing to do. Number two is read the constitution. Doesn't take 20 minutes, it's an easy thing to do. Number two is study the constitution. Once you've read it, you kind of get the overview. Now go back and look at the things in it and start making the list, 

Rick Green

and that's where we really are getting into the minds of the founders.

We're studying what those words actually mean.

David Barton

We're just reading and as we go through these next lessons, these other lessons, we're going to be studying what that meant and what they, and why they put that there and why that clause is there, and what are they trying to do.

Rick Green

All of these books are important, not just the words of the Constitution, but when you pull a book off the shelf, that is someone, that one of these guys in this picture that helped give us the document. It gives you a chance to really find out what they were thinking when they did it and it helps set the tone of the times.

David Barton

You know, people accuse the pilgrims all the time of being so bloodthirsty because they had the death penalty. So they did. They had 15 crimes that had the death penalty. But let's set the tone of the time. When they came to America from Great Britain, the country they left had the death penalty for over 230 crimes. So they've taken it from 230 death penalty crimes down to 15. I don't think they're bloodthirsty.

Rick Green

So that puts it in context, puts it in context. If you just look at it by itself, you could get way off. But if you step back and see the big picture, and that is the thing.

David Barton

You can get fixated on a particular issue and you see so much of the trees you miss the forest. Yeah, and that's why you read it to see the forest, go back and study some of the trees that are in the forest. And that's the second part. Third part is be able to teach it Once you see what's in there. Teach it, especially the rising generation, but in this culture with our poor education, it's all of us. Teach all of us.

Rick Green

Yeah, I love there's a Bible verse in Song of Solomon 813 that says your friends listen to your voice, so speak. Exactly, in this day and time, with what we have as social media, there's nobody who doesn't have a platform. That's a good point. There are people who will listen to you. There are people who will hear what you say on Facebook, doing it on Twitter, whatever you got, speak Might be five people, might be 5,000, but all of us have to go to a different influence. You talk to your friends and that makes a difference. Then what you want to be able to do is know those constitutional rights. Now you started teaching them. You now recognize when somebody has crossed the line. Wait a minute, he can't do that. That's not constitutional. And then at that point you can defend those rights. If they're coming after you or if they're coming after somebody else, you can assert those rights. Yeah, so you stand up, and those are the six things that everybody needs to be able to do with the Constitution.

David Barton

So you can't have that, that perception, you won't know that those rights have been violated If you haven't done these first steps. First You've got to study them and know. See.

I mean, you talked in there about how your mom, when they train her as a bank teller, they didn't show her counterfeit stuff, they just let her handle the real stuff so much that she instantly recognized it.

Break

David Barton

And we did the same thing in World War II. If you wanted to be able to recognize the enemy, you studied those enemy identification charts. So you study all the enemy planes, all the enemy tanks. So when you saw it you were ah, that's the enemy. Now we can defend and assert ourselves. We're going to offense. You want to make sure you didn't get one of the allied tanks. You didn't want one of the British tanks, so you studied. And once you studied you could recognize when there was something wrong. And that's what it takes Well, as we study, sometimes people today.

I mean, if we're not doing a good job of this in our schools, then that means we need more tools. We've got to have the tools to be able to study.

And, by the way, just so nobody gets intimidated over this thing, studying the constitution and understanding it is not a hard deal. This notion that we get from law school is that only the nine people in the Supreme Court really know what the constitution is, these high priests of the law. I have been to several legislatures where I have, and it just tears me up. Legislators say look, let's just go ahead and pass it in the Supreme Court and tell us whether it's constitutional or not. No, you took enough to uphold it and you don't have to be a brainchild to do this. And a great example of that is this little book right here. This is a book, an elementary book back in 1828, and elementary kids studied this kind of.

I mean so they're teaching the Constitution to elementary kids.

You don't wait until you get to law school, you don't wait until it's postgraduate stuff and the kind of stuff that they were having these elementary kids study the questions they asked 1828. 1828.

We'll ask some of the elementary questions.

Now, you're an attorney Elementary questions.

Okay, so these are questions Now you're an attorney, these are yeah, you were a legislator. Now what if I can't answer it? This is going to be bad, which I'm probably not going to be able to.

Rick Green

 So these are elementary school kids and they're asking them can the Congress punish piracy, that is, robbery committed at sea? Because we have some of that today. So this is actually a good question for today.

You movie about? Uh, that the captain. 

David Barton

That's international law. So can we in america do anything to punish other?

nations under our constitution? 

Rick Gree3n

I don't know the answer to that question off the top of my head. So what does the elementary catechism say? Yes, and all other crimes committed there. It can also punish offenses against the laws of nations. So there's another question. In fact it's the next question what do you mean by the law of nations? This is great. So this is done in a catechism way, where you ask one question.

It raises the next question. 

David Barton

That's right and that's elementary kids and I bet if you sit down in a law school and take third year law, students that are about to take their bar exam and run those questions through. It talks about mark and reprisal.

Yeah, All of these things.

Nobody knows what that is anymore. It's a very current thing that still goes on because it deals with restitution. It's a form of restitution, so there's a lot in there that's applicable. So do not get intimidated saying you know, I'm not that smart, you don't have to be smart. Founding fathers, remember, these were average guys. They were farmers, they were shipbuilders, they were. You know, one of these guys was a shoeshine guy. He made leather shoes and kept shoes. They, he was a shoeshine guy. He made leather shoes and kept shoes. They're common folks and they did this for the common, average, everyday person. So if they could do it, we can do it today.

Rick Green

And if kids of yesterday, in 1820, kids, little kids, could do it. So it was intended as an elementary category. It is, but we need it for all of us today Absolutely. Well, that's the whole idea of constitution Alive. So when we come back, we're going to actually talk about the seeds of liberty. We're going to dive into some of these materials and talk about what was planted to give us such a successful formula here on Constitutional Live with David Barton and Rick Green.

Well, that's the conclusion of segment one in Constitutional Live with David Barton and Rick Green. There's so much more there and if you'd like to find out more about that program, it's available on our website right now, at wallbuilders.com. It's called Constitutional Live with David Barton and Rick Green. Lots of other wealth of information available there on the website articles and things you can download. We hope you'll check out wallbuilders.com today and also at wallbuilderslive.com you can get this entire four-part series that we've done this week.

It's segment one out of Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. So it's just about 10% of the entire program, but we wanted to give you as much of it as we could here on the radio and share that with our listeners. So if you missed those first three parts and just tuned in today to part four of this four-part series, then visit our website at wallbuilderslivecom, click on the archives and you can now get all four parts to this series that we shared with you this week. We encourage you to email it out to your friends and family. Send them those links and get them educated on the original intent of our Constitution so that together we can save our constitutional republic.

You've been listening to the Wall Builders Live and daughters ever mindful of the lessons we've learned, let the torch of freedom burn.