Handing out Pocket Constitutions

By Douglas V. Gibbs

One of my favorite things to do in my life is to talk to people about the United States Constitution, to instruct and inform people about what was originally intended by the Founding Fathers, using the language of the Constitution and the writings of the people that were there when that great document was crafted during a convention in 1787.  Every opportunity I can I get into conversations with people, answering their questions, clearing up their misconceptions.  Sometimes, I would do things to seek out these opportunities.  Half a dozen times, before a recent host of medical difficulties I have encountered which have temporarily rendered me incapable of pursuing such activities, I traveled out towards Los Angeles, seeking the most liberal locations I could find, and then I would plant myself on a busy intersection, with a box of pocket constitutions, and start handing them out.

About one in ten were willing to accept the gift, and of those that would take the offering, a third of them would want to talk.  This is when the fun began.  No politics.  Just the Constitution.  Original intent.  Original plans.  Original authorities granted.  Questions and answers, from the point of view of those early Americans.

Among our most precious natural rights spelled out in the Constitution is the Freedom of Speech.  The intent was to specifically protect political speech, because that was the speech that was being denied the colonists before the original thirteen States decided to declare independence from Britain.  Freedom to speak out against tyranny, and illegal government, was considered a paramount right.  Important was, and is, the freedom to speak out against a government that over-taxes, over-regulates, and targets God-given rights that the government has no business involving itself with.

The document that spells out those freedoms, and limits the federal government against any intrusion upon those liberties, is the United States Constitution.  The Constitution is the Law of the Land, and the ultimate instrument of free speech against tyranny.  To reject the Constitution, and to quell any free speech associated with the Constitution, would be to side with tyranny, and side against freedom of speech.

Statism abhors the Constitution, because the very foundation of the document is to limit the powers of the federal government it creates, allowing the new central government to only handle external affairs in order to protect the States, and their sovereignty.  Instead, the government itself has become an enemy of the rights of the States as autonomous, sovereign, individual, and voluntary members of the union of which the federal government was created to defend and protect.

In Hawaii, students of an on-campus organization that embraces liberty at the University of Hawaii at Hilo were recently stopped from passing out Constitutions at one of their recruitment events, and they were told they could only do so in the "free speech zone," which is located in a small, muddy, frequently-flooded area on the edge of campus.  The students were told that school policies trump the Constitution, and that their freedom of speech rights do not apply on campus.

This is not the first time, and it won't be the last time.  Leftism hates the Constitution, because the Constitution, as designed, is a guard against big government.  As John Taylor, of Caroline, Virginia, wrote in his 1823 publication titled New Views of The Constitution of the United States, "each state retains its sovereignty," and are united as "free and independent states," and that ultimately the Constitutional Convention created a "federal system," rather than a "national government."

The original intent of the Constitution does not fit in with the agenda of the liberal left, and their progression towards an ever expanding central government, so they reject the concepts of individualism, state sovereignty, and original intent, and have proclaimed that the Constitution is a living and breathing document that can be molded as they see fit, as they desire, for their own power-seeking desires.  They rely on case law, the opinions of judges, rather than the actual words in the Constitution, so as to usurp the original meaning, and enable their lust for big government to be achieved.  In law school the Constitution is never opened and studied, for Constitutional Law revolves around case law, or the rulings of the judges they see fit to quote.  This is why they teach the children through public education "what to think," and why they censor any writings that oppose their agenda, including the United States Constitution.  The truth of the original intent of the United States Constitution is a danger to their agenda, and they must do all they can to silence anyone that dares support the Constitution, and if that means violating free speech rights to stop people from talking about or handing out pocket constitutions, the liberal left is willing to do so.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

ANOTHER university stops students from handing out Constitution - Daily Caller