Ignorance of the Constitution is endemic in America

I started the Constitution Study after reading a 2013 report showing how little most Americans know about the First Amendment. A recent survey shows just how little American college students know about the Constitution, our history, and civics in general. Things may be bad right now, but ignorance of the Supreme Law is no excuse. Hello there, everyday Americans. Paul Engel, here with the Constitution Study, where we read and study the Constitution, teach the rising generation to be free.

I'm glad you could join me. You know, I'm going to go back about, I'm going to start about 10 years ago when I started the Constitution Study.

It was years before that when I found the John Jay quote and actually read the Constitution for the first time. As I often say, I was struck by two things, how much I had not been taught in school, and how much of what I had been taught was just plain wrong.

Then, one evening, I'm driving home from a Bible study with some friends of mine, and I'm listening to a podcast, and they're talking about this survey, the State of the First Amendment. In the survey, they'd asked 1,000 people to name the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment. 36% in 2013 could not name a single freedom protected by the First Amendment. Now, they did this survey for several years, and that number varied between a low of 29% and a high of 39%. But when I heard that number, when I heard that over one-third of those surveyed in 2013 could not name one, not one, freedom protected by the First Amendment, well, that's what got me aggravated.

It's what got me energized. When I sat there driving home asking God, God, why don't we study the Constitution the way my friends and I studied the Bible? The idea for the Constitution Study was born. It was just a few weeks later, with the encouragement of a friend of mine, that we held our first Constitution Study. We would just get together, we would read the Constitution, we would discuss it, we would debate it, we'd try to understand what was going on.

And everybody I've quoted that 36% number to seemed shocked. But think about it. Were you taught the Constitution? Did you read the Constitution in high school, much less college?

For years, I've asked attorneys and others that have been through law school, when you were in law school, did you study the Constitution or constitutional law?

Only one man so far has said they studied the Constitution. Everyone else studied the opinion of judges. Not the actual law itself, it's studying the opinion of judges. Now, sometimes those opinions are right, but sometimes they're also wrong. But we've elevated that to such a state that the very idea of arguing the Constitution in a court of law seems to be, well, almost inconceivable.

And then I see this survey from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It's called Losing America's Memory 2.0.. It was a 35-question survey that they sent to over 3,000 undergraduate students. So these are students that have gone through middle school, high school, and are now in college, and they want to assess their grasp on our nation's history and government. Now, the survey was conducted by College Pulse, and I'll put a link to the report and the survey in the show notes so that when it posts on the website.

But I want to look at some of the results. they found, some of what they identified. They claim that just more than half of Americans have no general information about what they call American democracy and the Constitution, which already shows to me a serious problem, because America is not a democracy.

I want you to stop and think about that for just a second.

This survey, which is trying to identify gaps or the state of knowledge of our government, can't even identify the type of government we have. They claim out of their report that America is a democracy.

They say, only 34% of students could identify George Washington as an American general. at the Battle of Yorktown, the battle that, basically, was the last battle of the American Revolution. Only 42% were able to identify George Washington as first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.

Less than a quarter, only 23%, identified James Madison as the father of the Constitution.

Think about it. These numbers should be disturbing.

Only 22% of college seniors could identify the phrase, government of the people, by the people, for the people, as a line from the Gettysburg Address. There was a time in this country when every elementary school student memorized the Gettysburg Address.

Now just over a fifth of college students even know where that line comes from.

Let's see, over one-third were unable to identify the U.S. Constitution as establishing the division of power in American government. In other words, the three branches of government and how they function. Just over half knew that. Washington's Farewell Address warned against permanent alliances with foreign governments.

But you know what these people did know? 99% of those surveyed knew who the characters Beavis and Butthead are. And 98% could identify the singer Snoop Doggy Dog.

Think about that. It reminds me of when I was a student learning about programming.

And we had this phrase, right? GEGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're filling our kids' head with garbage, and then we're wondering why they think socialism's a great idea, why they think they have a right to be fed and housed and cared for at somebody else's expense.

When our college students can identify Beavis and Butthead and Snoop Doggy Dog, but know little about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Parents, if you're spending an average of $30,000 a year, probably more in some institutions, is this, are you getting what you're paying for?

But as I look at these numbers, I look at the questions and how they're asked and answered,

it reinforces a theory I've had for quite a while. And that is really a question of who's actually teaching our children.

And, based on that, what are they being taught?

Now, based on this, I can look and say, well, we're asking our schools, 90% of the students in this country go to a public school, a government school. And they're obviously not being taught about this country. You know, it's funny, I went to school over 40 years ago, and we didn't have a history class, we had a social studies class.

But I look at this and say, well, no wonder we know nothing about our history, we don't teach it.

And if we do teach it, it seems like we're teaching it poorly.

Why do I say that? Because I looked at some of these questions, and I realized that things that involve stories, things that involve, you know, something people can engage in, well, they scored pretty well. 89% identified Sputnik as our first man-made satellite.

They recognized that Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist, that the USR was led by Joseph Stalin in World War II, things that involve stories. Do you know what they don't seem to recognize?

The Reconstruction and the Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation, the father of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address.

Is it because those things are old? Well, it's not simply because those things are old, or some of them are, but not all of them.

They recognized, 73% recognized that John Adams was the second president of the United States, but only 23% recognized that Madison was the father of the Constitution.

It's what they're being taught, and what they're being taught doesn't involve the history that relates, it doesn't involve civics. It doesn't involve history related to how you participate in a civil society. What are they being taught? Well, they're being taught pop culture. Again, Beavis and Butthead, Snoop Dogg.

99 and 98% people could identify them, respectively.

Which brings me to an interesting question. See, one of the reasons why I really wasn't interested in history in school was because it was boring as snot. It was always taught as names and dates and places, and it wasn't until somebody started teaching me the stories that it made a difference.

You know, it's one thing to say, you know, the low point of the Revolutionary War was, you know, the Valley Forge.

Well, yeah, 38% of the people recognize that. But when you talk about the stories, it makes a difference. But here's the other thing. You see, as long as I've been alive, or at least as long as I can remember, the American people have depended on government to educate their children.

People go to, students go to government school. When I was, you know, five years old or so, I went to a government school and I was taught things. And thank God my parents taught me other things. But for the most part, most of my education came from government schools. And when it comes to civics, they failed miserably.

But that's because I believe we keep waiting for someone else to teach our children. We think it's like, you know, okay, you're five years old. We hand you to the government. It's now their responsibility. We have no point in it.

We have no agency in it. We have no say in it. Guess what? That's one of the reasons why we homeschool our daughter.

Because parents are supposed to have agency in the child's education.

Maybe we should be educating our students outside of just the classroom. Hey, you want to teach them in a public classroom. That's fine. But to me, that's not good enough. Here's the other thing I've noticed.

We're letting society, we're letting pop culture, today. we're letting social media educate our children.

That to me is downright dangerous. I don't get that from this survey. I get that from just observation. How many kids spend most of their day with their nose in a screen, on a laptop, on a phone, on a tablet, scrolling through social media or other, you know, YouTube, TikTok, other type of content. That's a form of education as well.

And if all you're putting into your head is that, is it any wonder that students don't know what the Constitution says, don't recognize that this America is a republic, not a democracy.

That they know more about the Scopes, Monkey Trial or the World War II German Allies than they do about the Federalist Papers and the ratification of the Constitution.

This, ladies and gentlemen, should be a concern to all of us. Because not only do the parents, should the parents have concern about what their kids have been taught, especially if they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to send them through college or university.

But remember, these young people, if they're not already, they'll be voters. They'll be choosing our representatives. They'll be participating in it. And if they don't understand the Constitution, if they don't understand the way our governments are structured,

how can we expect them to choose wisely people to hold office in those governments?

If they know more about Snoop Doggy Dog than they do about the First Amendment, how can we expect them, why would we be surprised if their choices are just as pop culture driven as anything else?

You know, they say ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well, it appears that the American people are in many ways almost universally ignorant of the supreme law of the land.

Yet we make excuses rather than fixing the problem.

By the way, that's why I started the Constitution study, was to help people read and study the Constitution.

Some people look at me and say, well, why bother? What's the big deal? I mean, that's for judges and lawyers.

I point them back to why John Jay said we should read and study the Constitution of our country, teach the rising generation to be free. He said that by knowing their rights, they'll sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.

Ignorance of the Constitution is disarming the mind of the American people, of the rising generations, to even know what their rights are, much less have the tools and the knowledge to defend and assert them.

Ladies and gentlemen, is that good enough for you? Because it certainly isn't good enough for me.

And in many ways, I believe we're living with the consequences of this endemic ignorance the American people have. But before I get into that, I have to take a break. I want to remind you, though, head over to the Patriots program, constitutionstudy.com slash Patriots. It's invitation only program, designed to help us read and study the Constitution, to be educated, to find ways to communicate, to share information, and then to act to be able to defend and assert not only our rights, but the rights of family, friends, and neighbors. I say it's invitation only.

You have to pass the boot camp in order to get an invitation. Now, the boot camp is free, and guess what? If you take it, it's a one-hour video, you'll learn something, and then decide whether or not you want to join us here at the Patriots program. Now, if you're having a problem focusing to try and do that, guess what? I can help you with that as well.

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It is frequently neither constitutional, it's never actually law.

I talked in the first segment about what got me started with the Constitution, how our general ignorance of the First Amendment got me starting the Constitution Study, and how our education system is failing to teach our students the basic civics needed to be an American citizen. There are a lot of consequences for that. Let's take a look at some of those consequences. The first have been, listen, it has been, I refer to the end of June, beginning of July, as the SCOTUS silly season. This is when the Supreme Court generally takes its most important or controversial opinions and releases them.

There's usually a great dump at the end of the month, and there's lots of stuff for me to go through. There have been some really constitutionally sound decisions made.

While I'm still working through some of them, we had Chevron, we had the bump stock, we've got one with administrative law judges.

They're not all right, because they had the presidential immunity case, and that was a whoops.

But we've had the courts coming in and actually making this Constitution, which, of course, really pisses off people who've used the courts unconstitutionally, basically to get around the Constitution, by simply getting a court to claim that the Constitution doesn't say what it specifically says, or a law doesn't say what it specifically says. And that's been pissing off the Marxists and the collectivists in this country. So it really shouldn't surprise you that in a call with the Congressional Progressive Congress members,

Joe Biden said, I'm going to need your help on the Supreme Court, because I'm about to come out, I don't want to prematurely announce it, but I'm about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court.

Now, I find this, again, to me, this is the general ignorance of the Constitution. First of all, the only thing the president has to do with the Supreme Court is nominating and appointing members of the court with the advice and consent of the Senate. That's it. His only role with the court is that. But it's interesting how he's very upset, apparently, because he doesn't like how the court has opined lately.

In Fisher v. United States, for example, they said the Department of Justice has been abusing a Sarbanes-Oxley law in order to go after people who supported Donald Trump and were at the Capitol on January 6th, whether they rioted or not. But even the rioters, they're overcharging them by intentionally misinterpreting what the law says.

Again, of course, not only did it involve Mr. Fisher, but it certainly didn't do Mr. Smith and the Georgia County District Attorney, Fannie Willis, their cases, any good. But then there's more. Now you have a Florida judge, Eileen Cannon, who said, guess what?

Jack Smith was never legally appointed to a position that does not constitutionally exist. Therefore, his whole case is gone. They basically threw out the indictment. Now, Mr. Smith is appealing this decision.

But again, they look at the Constitution. The Constitution says the office must be created by Congress, not by law, not simply by the executive branch. The Attorney General cannot just make up what they call a special counsel. The office must be created by law. And the appointment has to be decided by law.

Can it be done by the Attorney General? Didn't happen, which means it needs to go through the appointment process, and it didn't. And, of course, now this goes on top of the Chevron decision, overruling or overturning the 1984 decision that says, when Congress is silent or ambiguous, it's the executive agencies that get to decide, which, again, violates the separation of powers, violates the structure of the government created by the Constitution. And, yeah, there have been a bunch of, well, let's call them, well, let's say what they are, Democratic lawmakers and liberal activists complaining that they're not getting their way.

Now, apparently sources familiar with the details told the Washington Post that.

they want to push for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the broad immunity for presidents and other officeholders.

Okay, yeah, that one, actually, I don't think they need a constitutional amendment. I think the court just got it wrong because there is no presidential immunities clause in the Constitution. It's their desire. Again, this was a politicized, I believe it was a politicized decision. It was a Trump versus Biden, and it was people looking at the law fair against Trump.

And then, rather than dealing with the law fair, they said, well, we'll just pretend you can't do that anymore because you're going to make up this immunity that doesn't really exist. But I'm curious, what does Biden plan to do to limit the court? You see, the Supreme Court, and I'm going to be careful how I say this, because I don't want to mislead anyone. When we talk about the three branches of government, they're often referred to as co-equal branches, which is not entirely true. In other words, there are checks and balances between the three.

Most of the powers delegated to the United States are delegated to Congress. A few are delegated to the president, and there's really only one delegated to the courts, and that is trying controversies, the judicial power. But because the Supreme Court is established by the Constitution, it cannot be regulated by Congress. They talk about term limits. Well, that has to be a constitutional amendment because the Constitution says that federal judges serve during the duration of their good behavior.

The constitutional standard is not established by Congress, so it has to be a constitutional amendment, which means not only would they have to get it past two-thirds of each house of Congress, but they'd have to get three-fourths of the states to sign on as well. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen. Now, I have a general aversion to term limits, but that's not my point. If you understand the Constitution, there's actually very little that can be done to, how do you put it,

rein in the justices without a constitutional amendment, to limit the court by modifying the Constitution.

But also consider this. I shouldn't say Biden. There are people pushing for term limits on the courts, and it always seems to happen when they don't get their way in court.

California Representative Roe Connon said that Biden should run on term limits in 2024.. Interesting. It doesn't seem to be a problem. in 2020, when the court wasn't finding against the liberal, collectivist, Marxist agenda. There was no call for term limits.

Do you know why? Because they were getting their way. See, judicial term limits is about nothing but politics. It's about using politics to get judges more aligned with your political philosophy on the court. How do you do that?

Well, you get the older people off, and you bring the newer people in, and you've got new ideas. Guess what? The Republicans said the same thing, or the same types of things, when it was the Marxists that were getting their way. So this really is nothing new. But again, everything he's talking about would require not just a congressional act, it requires a constitutional amendment.

And he's not going to get that simply from the progressive caucus in Congress. But Congress does have a way to deal with judges, federal judges that act badly, that go beyond their oath of office and do all sorts of bad things. It's called impeachment.

See, while all executive, all federal officers, president, vice president, they're all subject to impeachment for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Only federal judges have another restriction put on them. They're good behavior. Article 3 clearly says that the judges of both the Supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behavior. Well, when they behave badly, whose job is it to fix it?

That's right, the representatives of the people in the House of Representatives.

So, if we think that the judges are acting badly, how about you file articles of impeachment?

Now, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has. She's filed articles of impeachment against Justice Thomas, and she actually wrote a compelling argument in those articles. Would it stand up to legal scrutiny? I don't know. She makes a lot of allegations without actual evidence, but that's why I said it may not stand up to an actual legal review.

But at least she did the constitutional thing. I don't often say good things about AOC, but here she did something constitutional. It's well within her power, and she did it. Perhaps if the American people were more aware of the Constitution, we'd hire representatives that were also more aware of the Constitution and would use their constitutional tools to deal with the issues they see as problems in our country.

But let's look at the other side of the aisle. So the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed what they call the SAVE Act, part of which is to make it illegal for noncitizens to register to vote in quote-unquote federal elections. Well, first of all, there's only one federal election. That's when the presidential electors in December vote for the president.

No citizen, no person in the United States, individual votes in a federal election. These are all state elections. When you vote for House and Senate, even though they're going to be federal offices, those are state elections. They're controlled by the state, including the manner of voting. Now, Congress can modify the manner of voting by law, but only for House and Senate, which runs into a problem.

Is registration truly the manner of election? Now, a case could be made that since in order to vote, you have to register to vote. But the problem here is Congress, if Congress passes Act, which impacts the manner of voting, not just in House and Senate races, but in presidential electors, in state and local races as well, which means it goes far beyond their constitutional power. Now, personally, yes, I agree. Only citizens of a state should be allowed to vote.

But that's my point. It's of a state.

Congress has no authority. This bill is void because it violates the Constitution.

Unless they specifically limit it to House and Senate, then it's unconstitutional because it goes beyond their power delegated to them by the Constitution. But I also agree that the states should be enacting laws. In fact, many states actually have it in their Constitution that only citizens of the states are allowed to register to vote. Now, I've heard a lot of people championing and triumphing over this particular, yes, it's right, right. Well, there's a problem.

See, just because it gives you the outcome you want doesn't mean it's constitutional, doesn't mean it's legal, and it certainly doesn't mean it is actually right. See, our almost universal ignorance of the Constitution often leads us to taking these actions that have long-term consequences. But what do I mean by that? Well, if Congress gets to decide who is and isn't allowed to register to vote, what else can they do to decide? we're not going to allow people to vote?

Again, if Congress can meddle in the voting of state elections, yes, when you vote for a U.S. House member and U.S. Senators, those are state elections. They are not federal elections. They are elections for federal office.

There is a distinction. But we're so ignorant of the Constitution, we don't realize that we allow Congress to open Pandora's box to see what else can be let free to come and bite us in the backside at a later date. Okay, I have another break coming up before I go, though. You know what? I really encourage you to buy from companies that believe what you, and I believe.

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That'd be interesting. But I want to look some more at the consequences. For example, as I mentioned,

one federal district judge, Eileen Cannon, threw out the indictment against Donald Trump in the classified documents case in Florida. Not just the charges, threw the indictment completely out because she realized, or she claims, that Jack Smith, the special counsel, was never properly appointed to a position that doesn't constitutionally exist. That's good news. I'm glad, based on what I've seen, that she seems to have come to a constitutionally sound answer, a position, and I'm glad to see that. How long has this case been going on?

Well, Donald Trump was indicted in June of 23,, so June of last year, by a grand jury in Miami over the classified documents issue.

Now, that's where the grand jury said, here you go, there's the indictment. There was a lot of time and effort and money spent on the investigation, but it's been more than a year that Donald Trump has been under indictment, apparently, or at least allegedly, by a special counsel that doesn't legally exist.

You have a year of pain, suffering, court costs, legal costs, all of this stuff that Donald Trump has been put through, apparently, by a special counsel that isn't really a special counsel.

Now, here's the question. If Ms. Cannon didn't come to this decision until shortly after Justice Thomas pointed this out in a decision involving, I believe it was, a presidential immunities case, so that dealt with the January 6th indictment, which I think was August of last year, August of 23..

Now, again, so you've got more than a year of these indictments floating around.

You have all the precursors, all the stuff, the investigations, the allegations, the accusations.

before Jack Smith actually got his indictments. It all is going to lay down to this question. It took a year for a single justice to point this out. Now, listen, I remember my grandfather used to tell me, where were you when the page was blank? Part of me looks at this and says, I'm actually glad Justice Thomas pointed this out because I hadn't thought of it.

I have to admit, I hadn't thought of it.

But perhaps, maybe if the legal system, the attorneys on both sides, especially the attorneys for Trump, might have thought of this, might have noticed this.

Maybe this could have happened earlier. I don't. I don't. You can't prove something. What would have happened?

You can't prove it. But I find it interesting that finally, one person noted this, happened to be a prominent person in Justice Thomas. And now, the Miami case, the documents case, has been thrown out. Now, that's being appealed. The Department of Justice is appealing the judge's dismissal of the indictment.

And that should be interesting. to see how the 11th Circuit Court finds on this. Because again, it took a judge to point out something that nobody else had thought about. The question is, is that going to be followed by not just the district court, but the circuit court as well? And of course, it does impact not just one, but two cases, because Jack Smith is also the counsel on Trump's January 6th case.

Now, Ms. Cannon's decision only impacts that one case. That's the only one she's seeing. It's being appealed to the circuit court, which again, only deals with, doesn't deal with Washington, D.C., so it would not directly impact Washington, D.C. But let's face it, the more courts that look at this and say, wait a second,

Mr. Smith was not properly appointed, the more pressure there will be to throw out the other case brought by, any other cases actually, brought by Jack Smith as special counsel.

So again, I'm not casting blame, right? Where were you when the page was blank? Before Justice Thomas mentioned this, I haven't heard anybody else mention it. It was not a thought in my head. I'm not trying to lay blame.

What I am asking is, if we had a more generalized understanding of the constitution, would somebody else have found this? If it was taught more in law schools, would somebody else have found this and possibly not have to spend the last year in this, and the turmoil we've had in a prosecutor, or I should say a quote-unquote special counsel, that may not really be a special counsel. Now I found this other story, and I found it, well, kind of interesting. Elon Musk is moving both X and SpaceX out of California. He's moving them to Texas.

According to a July 16 post on X, Mr. Musk said he's going to move SpaceX from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, which is a company town near Brownsville, Texas, and he's going to move X from San Francisco to Austin. Now, apparently Texas Governor Greg Abbott loves the idea. He said it's going to cement Texas as a leader in space exploration. Cool.

This is more employees, more taxes, more people exiting California.

Now. Mr. Musk made this announcement a day after Governor Newsom, Governor of California, signed a law, the first in the nation, that prohibits school districts from requiring teachers and staff to disclose a student's gender identity or sexual orientation to anyone without the child's permission. Now the law doesn't take effect until January, but he signed it. Now.

according to the law, it says LGBTQ plus pupils have the right to express themselves freely at school without fear, punishment, or retaliation, including that teachers or administrators might out them without their permission. Policies that require outing pupils without their consent violate pupils' rights to privacy and self-determination. Well, again, we run into a bit of a problem, at least from a constitutional standpoint. You see, you're focusing on the students' rights. What about the parents' rights?

Now it's been, the Supreme Court has already said parents have a liberty right in controlling the outcome of education of their children, their minor children, meaning what California has just done is violate the 14th Amendment because they're depriving parents of their right, the liberty, to oversee the raising and education decisions of their child without due process of law. Now I understand there are a lot of things that kids don't want to tell their parents. And when I taught Sunday school, my rule was simple. My rule was, listen,

what you say to me is generally private unless, in my opinion, there's a safety or health risk to it. But I will tell you before I go to your parents. In fact, I will go with you to your parents to have a discussion. That's the way I laid it out. I wanted them to understand that most of what they talk to me about is absolutely privileged.

It's not privileged, it's private. I won't share it. But if there's a serious risk, a health risk, a legal risk to a minor, I have a right and I owe a duty to the parents to let them know. But I also have a duty to the child to not simply throw them out and to swim or drown. So that's why I would say I would come to them, I would tell them, and then we would both go to the parents and explain.

I'd give him, I'd give the child a chance to tell what was going on, or I would give the parents my point of view. But it was this, that was my balancing act between the right of the child, the pupil in this case, to privacy, and the right of the parents to know about what's going on with their child, especially if it involved legal or health issues, legal, safety or health issues. And the state of California said, listen, we don't care about the parents.

The whole idea that students have a right to self-determination says who?

Granted, if you're talking about an 18-year-old or a 21-year-old, absolutely. I picked those days because 18 is when you're old enough to vote, 21 is when you're old enough to purchase alcohol.

But if you're talking about a minor child, 12,, 13,, 14, they don't have a right to self-determination. Their parents guide their education, their upbringing, their health care. You talk about sexual orientation and gender identity, they're talking about medical issues, mental issues that come out of that. Shouldn't the parents know, in order to oversee the health care, both physical and both medical and mental, of their child?

And again, based on this,

Elon Musk claims that the law attacks both families and companies. I'm kind of curious where he gets the companies, because, as I understand it, the law only involves schools.

But he said, nope, we're not going to do this. So he's moving two of his companies out of California, which is exactly the constitutional thing to do. It's federalism. We have 50 independent states. If one state's doing something that's damaging or that you can't support, you can move to another state.

Now again, this wasn't the only, apparently it was a straw that broke the camel's back, because Mr. Musk has been complaining about safety in downtown San Francisco. He says he's had enough with dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.

So again, I come down, where does this fit in our constitutional education? Recognize, yeah, California has no right to these companies being there. The owner, Mr. Musk, gets to decide. And if California is going to do things that drive him out, then Californians will suffer the consequences.

And when they suffer those consequences, how many of them will say, well, wait a second, we voted for Mr. Newsom to be our governor. Maybe not individually, but as a group, we voted for the state legislators that passed these laws.

You have to recognize that the Constitution doesn't absolve us of the responsibility of the consequences of our actions, which takes me back to our general ignorance of the Constitution. See, the Constitution is ink on parchment. There's nothing else to it. The Constitution doesn't get up and dope slap people when they violate it. It doesn't take them to court.

It is ink on parchment. It is words.

Ultimately, it's up to people to actually exercise it, to use it. As John Francis Mercer said, I think it was during the debates of the federal Constitution, he said, it is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government and interest in maintaining it that is to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance and must do the business.

We are a constitutional republic. That means we, the people, choose the men, and, yes, now women,

who are in government. We bring them into government. Governor Newsom ran for office, but it's the people of California that brought him into office. The same with the legislature, the same with Governor Abbott in the legislature in Texas, or Governor Lee in the legislature here in Tennessee. That includes the president and the legislature that we brought into the United States and the Congress.

We are the ones. The men do the work. They do the business. We are the ones that choose them. That is our job.

That is our business.

Since we are generally ignorant of what the Constitution says, how do we hire people that will take an oath to support the Constitution when we don't even know what the Constitution says? How do we know if they're fulfilling their oath? If we don't know the Constitution, they take an oath to support. How?

More importantly, how do we fix it? Well, thankfully, the answer to that is relatively simple, although it may not be as easy as we'd like. We have to start by dealing with this ignorance. How do you do it? Like John Jay said, read and study the Constitution.

And you can find a copy of the Constitution free online. That's not a big deal, but you're going to diligently study it. So I wrote the book, The Constitution Study. I studied the Declaration and the Constitution. I went through every clause and studied it and researched it, and then I wrote about it so that people could follow along.

Now, maybe you agree with me. Maybe you don't. But I think it's important we take the time to read and study the Constitution, so we at least know what it says. So when people like Justice Thomas or Judge Cannon or Jack Smith, or pick your politician or lawyer or judge, says the Constitution says something, we have a bit of an idea of whether or not that's true. Are they violating our rights or not?

But also, have we taken the time to prepare to defend and assert our rights? You see, if you don't know what the Constitution says, then how can you use it to defend your rights? If an officer illegally detains you or illegally searches you, you can just say, yeah, you're violating my rights, but do you have a defense? Wait a second. The Fourth Amendment says you can't do that.

That's what it means to be able to defend your rights, and that's what we, as the American people, need to do. Stop waiting around for someone to teach us what we should be teaching ourselves. Now, if you like that idea, then I hope you'll come back and join us here for the Constitution study every weekday at 4 p.m. Eastern time on America Out Loud, Talk Radio, Heard on the iHeart Radio Network. You can also listen in your favorite podcast app.

Now, typically, the episodes go to podcasts a couple of days after they're heard on Talk Radio. But do me a favor, subscribe to the show. Leave us ratings and review, especially on Apple. It helps the algorithm move us up so that more people can see us and more people can find out about the Constitution study and the document we study. You can find all the links you need at the homepage at AmericaOutLoud.News.

But this is information that I think is too important to keep to yourself. We need to share this information, and, by doing so, help share the blessings of liberty for everyone, from sea to shining sea.