0:02 hello and welcome to this special edition of the way to wow shows I'm your host Kevin bemel and today we're celebrating Constitution Day or as it's perhaps more Formerly Known Constitution and Constitution and day and citizenship day so this is perhaps the least known um holiday in the American calendar um it it's probably fighting it out for Armed Forces Day which I think also very few people um know anything about and it
0:40 it it really it it the the holiday had its antecedence in something called um I am an American day that was first observed in 1940 so if you're you know if you know your history uh 1940 was uh basically a year before the United States got involved in World War II Europe was already fighting World War II in Europe it started on September 1st 1939 there was a lot of tension in this
1:18 country especially uh initially with German Americans and so you know the idea of affirming I am an American I think resonated uh with with people at that time um originally it was set for the third I think it was the third Monday in May um but in 1952 U President Harry Truman signed a law replacing I am an American day with citizenship day and in
1:56 1955 um president Dwight Eisenhower Pro proclaimed the first what he called Constitution week now it took all the way until 2004 so just 20 years ago for Senator Robert bird to propose that uh citizenship day be renamed Constitution Day and citizenship day and be celebrated on September 17th of each year now the reason for September 17th
2:32 was in 1787 the Constitution was um was ratified on on that date um I I take that back it wasn't ratified that's when the delegates to the constitutional convention uh signed the Constitution uh it it subse subsequently was sent to the Confederation Cong Congress and and then um had to be ratified by um nine out of the 13 original states
3:10 so so so so the day today really celebrates this this document called the US Constitution coupled with our idea our our um our situation as Citizens of the United States now at the time the idea of citizenship was somewhat new in the world not that it had never existed before it had because in in Greece in ancient Greece um people were considered
3:48 citizens of of of that that democracy so too in Rome when Rome was a republic um a certain group of people were citizens but um heading into uh the American Revolution so because countries were essentially monarchies um people were not citizens they were subjects and in fact in England today still um the the people who live in Great Britain who
4:27 are I you know I don't even know what to call them they are subjects of um and now his majesty um Charles King Charles um you know people who move there or who visit there are not subjects of course and to be honest with you I don't know you know what is the process for gaining um subth I guess it would be instead of citizenship um in in Great Britain um but um in other countries so France is another example prior to the French Revolution the people who lived in
5:03 France were subjects of of the king of France uh after the French Revolution France became a republic as they say in French and so now um the people who were in France became citizens so citizens imply a uh Republic form of government and and I'm just going to say for a minute here while we talk about the United States as being a democracy it is it is not a democracy okay a democracy is a government where every citizen
5:38 votes on every issue before the government clearly that is not what we do here in the United States we are a republic in that we elect people to represent us in the government and those people vote on legislation okay so America has always been Republic It's a republican form of government this has nothing to do with the political parties the names of the political parties developed out of these Concepts there are Democrat Democratic
6:15 aspects to our Republic form of government um but I don't know of anywhere in the United States where there is a true democracy not even at the Municipal level like in a city for example I don't think there's maybe there's some City out there where every single um resident of a city votes on every single governmental issue but most cities have something like a city council and a mayor um the city council is the equivalent of a legislature and
6:51 the mayor is the equivalent is is the executive although in some cities you have a a city manager who's really who holds the executive power and the mayor is more like sort of president of the legislature something like that so uh so in the United States after the um the uh war for independence Was Won by you know what had been declared in the Declaration of Independence the United States of America in and the war was was Was Won
7:26 in basically 1783 so the United States existed as a confederation under something called The Articles of Confederation and the idea was this the the individual states ran their own Affairs and had this rather loose affiliation with each other and eventually a number of people came to the conclusion that the conf Federation was not strong enough so for
8:03 example in in dealing with England France Russia other countries the weakness of the Confederation system put the United States at a disadvantage and finally enough uh support uh grew that in uh January or February of 178 7 a constitutional convention was convened in order to draft a the
8:38 Constitution or a Constitution under which the federal government of the United States would be organized now this was a controversial move certainly there were a lot of people who were opposed just to a constitutional convention nonetheless the delegates met there there were originally I think 72 elected of which 55 met in uh Philadelphia and they started talking about how to form a government and and and they they there were like certain
9:15 categories of delegates so there were people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin who were very prominent individuals pretty much everybody in the United States knew them and they brought a certain gravitus to the proceedings the legitimacy to them of course George Washington was the commander-in-chief of of the United States Army uh during the the war for independence Benjamin Franklin of course the noted Statesman and humorist uh interestingly enough neither uh uh um uh
9:51 John Adams or Thomas Jefferson two of the best known members of the Continental Cong Congress that formed or that eventually uh wrote the Declaration of Independence neither one of them were at the Constitutional Convention um um at the time Adams was I believe minister to Great Britain and Jefferson was minister to to France so so the convention convened and there they they developed basically oh um I'm sorry and
10:27 other other other types of delegates there were delegates that were they were sort of um pH philosophers and theorists about how government should work people like Alexander Hamilton James Madison Etc um and then there was um kind of and oh then there was a group who they were very very committed to the rights of the individual states and so they essentially wanted to to undermine almost the Constitutional
11:03 Convention because they they didn't want to see a stronger central government and then there were kind of all the rest who were there you know appointed by their legislatures their state legislators and and and you know had yet to be convinced um you know what really ought to happen and so they they came with uh you know open minds of one degree or another so um the the convention convened and and pretty quickly two um groups developed one was this sort of
11:49 anti-conversion pretty loose and the other were what we might call the constitutionalists who were in favor of creating a strong stronger uh a stronger basis for the federal government and so Virginia I'm sorry so a a a plan was was I mean different ideas were debated and a lot of issues came up so one of the major issues that came up was the large states like Pennsylvania Virginia New York that had
12:25 large populations they wanted uh representation in the federal government proportionate to their populations which of course would give them dominance the smaller States like Connecticut Rhode Island um and the Lesser populated states even Georgia for example they were much more desirous of representation essentially by state so that they didn't get overwhelmed by the large populated states and and and so
13:02 this this was another battle that was sort of raging um within the Continental Congress and so something called the Virginia compromise was proposed and this is how we ended up with the legis the federal legislature that we have now where we have a senate and we have what's became called the House of Representatives so the Senate repres represents each state equally each state gets two senators senators and with there being 50 States today we have a
13:37 100 Senators the House of Representatives is elected on the basis of population and so California having the this being the state with the largest population has the largest delegation other states even though uh that are very small like Rhode Island has one um member of the House of Representative and Rhode Island is the smallest state but interestingly enough Wyoming which is a very large state in terms of of size square miles of land it also only
14:13 has one representative because the population of Wyoming I I think is around a million people something like that so this this you know bamal legislature is what it's called bamal means two housing developed where you could have where where sort of each side got their their way if you will that's why they called it the compromise and indeed compromise really was the fundamental principle that was exercised at the Constitutional Convention nobody
14:51 got what he wanted purely the the theorists did not get their pure theories the loose um the loose Confederation group did not win the um more highly structured more powerful Federalist group did not win it really became a matter of not what can we create but what do we think will be adopted because the members of the Constitutional Convention knew from the beginning that the states would have to
15:26 ratify this document and and so for example if there had only been a senate which gave States equal representation large states would not have ratified the Constitution and likewise if there had only been a House of Representative House of Representatives with proportionate representation according to population uh the small states would not have ratified it so it it took it took compromise to to reach a document and a system that a majority of the
16:03 states could agree to and so what was set up then is essentially the system we still have today so the Constitution has seven articles in it article one sets up the structure of the legislature this bamal system that I've just been talking about and it it talked about what the qualifications for senators and representatives had to be what powers would be vested in the legislature Article 2 set up what's called the executive branch of of the
16:38 United States and the president of the United States this office was created and the president was called the chief executive of the United States now this position was also very very controversial because having just recently gained independence from Great Britain and in particular George III who in the Declaration of Independence was labeled as a tyrant Americans in general were very skeptical about having one person you know at the time one man
17:13 who would at least in concept wield such enormous power and so there was a lot of concern about who would this man be how would he be elected how could we guarantee that it wouldn't be some know crazy radical or something like this and so rather than provide for direct election of the president uh by what would be called you know Democratic means the the uh the um the people who
17:48 um the members of the Constitutional Convention came up with the idea of the Electoral College something that at the time was thought thought to be a pretty good idea and now has become you know quite a political football as we see elections where um one candidate may win the popular vote but another candidate wins The Electoral College vote and therefore becomes president and people claim that it's anti-democratic I mean strictly speaking according to the words democracy what
18:23 what democracy means uh yes the Electoral colleges is not Democratic because the person with the most votes uh doesn't become president necessarily however the like so many other things the Electoral College was a way of balancing the interests of large population States and small population States so today if if the Electoral College were essentially wiped out so
18:58 then just a few States would really decide who was elected president and they would be California New York Illinois uh Texas Florida those five states um comprise I I I think close to if not more than 50% of the US population and so because of that pretty much the votes of all the other states would would have very little impact on on what happens um with with the election of a president whereas today
19:34 with the with the Electoral College in place you can actually see that although California for example still has a big impact on who the president will be because um a Democrat running for president can count on getting all of California's electoral votes still The crucial states are are um Michigan Pennsylvania uh North Carolina Arizona Nevada and one of the things that's interesting for example is Arizona did not used to be a swing state Arizona
20:11 used to be a reliably Republican state but that has changed um and and Florida used to be much more of a swing state but and and as did Ohio for example um but now both of those have become pretty reliably Republican in and so this this movement among which states are crucial to winning a presidential election only occurs because of the Electoral College and and so this this compromise that was
20:46 made at the Constitutional Convention you can see though that it has made for more Dynamic elections where candidates have to focus pretty broadly on on the 50 states um look there's some that certain you know California largely gets ignored by both Republican the Republican and the Democratic pre uh presidential candidates because the the state is going to go Democratic okay and other states um that are reliably Republican also get ignored
21:22 right but um you still see a lot of campaigning throughout the country and that's largely due to the Electoral College so Article 2 establishes The Office of the President and also the vice president it it delineates uh their qualifications how they'll be elected and what their uh duties and powers are and then the Third Article of in the Constitution establishes the the federal Judiciary this was also controversial
21:59 was there anything about the Constitution that wasn't controversial and the answer is no everything about it was debated heavily debated um you know during the the the time between uh January and September of 1787 um one of the one of the uh concerns about a federal Judiciary was that it would override all of the state judiciaries um another thing was um jury uh trial by jury was in ingrained in the US
22:37 mindset um but the the article three didn't Institute trial by jury for uh civil matters for example and so that was that was also controversial for some people now it's interesting because the article three is the shortest of of the first three articles of the Constitution and that's because Congress was given the authority um about how to establish a federal Judiciary even though it constitutes a separate branch of the government so
23:13 each of the branches has checks and balances on the other so for example the president of the United States selects judges to sit on in the federal courts but those selections have to be confirmed by the Senate um a 2third vote of the Senate is I well actually no that was overturned so it's now a majority vote of of the Senate um the president of the United States is elected by the
23:49 Electoral College and he has the authority to execute laws meaning make sure the laws are carried out but Congress has the authority to write the laws okay so and Congress can write a law the president has to sign the law in order for it to go into effect if the president declines to sign a law or formally vetos it Congress can overrule the president's veto with a 2third vote in each in each
24:26 chamber in each house of of of the legislature so again you see the checks and balances there now I mentioned that the president selects judicial candidates the Senate confirms them but once having done so judges to the federal bench serve a life tenure so they don't have to be reappointed or reelected which gives them a lot of independence from the other two political branches of government having said that both the president and judges
25:05 to the federal bench are subject to impeachment by the legislature so impeachment uh a vote of impeachment is held in the House of Representatives and then a trial is held by the Senate we saw that a couple of times when President Trump was was President so you can see there are CH oh and and one of the things that's not specifically in the Constitution but developed was something called the um right of review that's not the formal name for it I'm I'm going up on the
25:41 formal name but um the the Supreme Court sort of took on the authority to review laws to make sure that they were constitutional meaning that they did not conflict with rules in the constitution in particular with the Bill of Rights which I'll I'll I'll talk about later because in the the seven articles of the Constitution there's act there's there's very little there about the specific
26:16 ways that the federal government will act uh and I'm I'm not going to so I just want to talk about those three uh those the first three articles to the Constitution um the other ones are are it's not that they're not important but like one of them dealt with how debts of the various states were going to be dealt with and and um article seven though specified how the Constitution would be made would be ratified basically so once the Constitution was signed on September
26:52 17th 1787 it was submitted to the Confederation con Congress and the Confederation Congress had to decide either to approve the Constitution or disapprove the Constitution or do neither and in the event it did neither it just sent it on to the various States for their ratification so it it it basically demerged on taking a position um which is frankly one of the was one
27:27 of the problem of the Confederation Congress was it was it it it it it was very ineffective and so again the Constitution went to each state legislature and the legislator voted and and the and eventually nine of the 13 states ratified the Constitution and therefore it became the so-called law of the land now it is interesting to note that Rhode Island did not send delegates to the Constitutional Convention but nonetheless eventually I
28:04 I believe all the states came to ratify it now one of the biggest concerns about the Constitution by well well let me take a step back so um after the Constitution was signed two groups emerged who that who argued over whether the Constitution should be ratified one was called the Federalists who in general were in favor of the Constitution and the other were called the Anti-Federalists who in general were opposed to the Constitution
28:42 now it's been oversimplified that the Federalists generally speaking represented the moneyed concerns in the United States and the Anti-Federalists um um were were basically of the the farmers and and and the little guy that's that's actually not historically accurate so there the those who were Federalists and Anti-Federalist even those those titles were not I mean it wasn't like there were two strict parties like there are today with the Democrats and the
29:18 Republicans and even today you can see people in in the parties that you know vastly disagree with their with their you know fellow party members so that was the case with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists as well there were there were farmers and Tradesmen who who thought that the constitution was a fine idea there were moneyed interests who thought that a stronger central government was not in was was not to their benefit and was not a good idea so um but what happened was these two groups started you know arguing pro and
29:56 con for the Constitution and one of the things that was written one of the seminal Works about that was written during this time was a set of of essays that eventually were compiled as The Federalist Papers and they were written by Alexander Hamilton James Madison and John J although they didn't write under their own names they they wrote Under pseudonyms and they wrote uh let me see I forget how many there are are the
30:32 80 yeah there's 85 uh essays in The Federalist Papers and they were all designed to explain how the Constitution worked why it was a good idea and and and in general support the idea of ratification of the Constitution and and so when we're trying to figure out what did the framers of the Constitution really intend this document to do our best source is really the Federalist Papers
31:07 in terms of an originalist approach okay and and as these debates were going on one of the things that arose that actually people on both sides Federalist and Anti-Federalists came to agree on was the Constitution needed a Bill of Rights in order to protect the individual rights of the citizens and and the position of the individual states and so uh the original 10 amendments to the Constitution were all
31:43 uh ratified together and called The Bill of Rights now since there since that there's been 17 additional amendments although the Constitution hasn't been amended in in in quite a long time now um it's it's it's a it's a very difficult thing to amend the Constitution um you need to have a vote of 2third of each house of the legislature and then I believe it's three quarters of the states have to ratify an amendment um that that also how the Constitution is amended is is also one of the Articles of the Constitution and So eventually not
32:19 eventually but but soon after ratification of the Constitution these these 10 articles that made up the Bill of Rights were written and ratified and and that gave people a lot more comfort with this stronger federal government and and and again over over the LA the last uh it's been what 20 13 and 24 237 years um the Constitution has done its job in terms of keeping America as
32:56 as a strong union while maintaining what's called a federal system of government so I talked about the checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government but there is another system of checks and balances embedded in the federal system and that is the Constitution delineates the specific powers that the federal government has and then the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says essentially and I'm
33:33 I'm going to read this so you get the actual text in a few minutes says that any power not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution rests with the states or the people and the reason this is so is to create a checkin balance on the entire federal government so the Federal government is is not supposed to be this all powerful governing body that intervenes on all of the 50 states okay
34:08 it has its areas that it's supposed to be involved in and and they are things like National Defense they're things like uh foreign relations um they include um the treasur department of the treasury which is maintaining a national currency those kinds of things now over the decades the power and reach of the federal government has expanded far beyond probably what any delegate even the most Ardent Federalist thought the federal government would do and this is
34:44 of course one of the tensions that we see today is between those who who think that the federal government has far too much power and those who want to see even more power centralized in the federal government and and this this tension is part of the Constitutional system and it's there to see to it that on the one hand the federal government doesn't become so all powerful that it controls everything in the United States but on the other hand isn't so weak that it has no ability to regulate the Union
35:22 in the way that the constitution wants to see it do so so what I'm going do is I'm going to read some excerpts from the Constitution I'm actually not going to read any of the uh articles um they're they're pretty dry but I'm going to start out with reading the Preamble now the Preamble is important because it explains why the Constitution was created however it actually doesn't add any legislative or duties to the constit
35:57 institution it's a general statement so I remember one time uh when I was on deployment I was in the wardroom having lunch and a couple of my colleagues were around and somehow we got onto the subject of politics which was generally not something discussed in the ward and I was I was talking to the fellow sitting next to me and I was saying to him that I was talking to him about um some some issues that were going on at the time and explaining to him why I thought what was happening was unconstitutional and another fellow
36:32 sitting at the table turned to us and he said anything can be made to fit into the Constitution and what he was referring to was the Preamble in other words pretty much anything the federal government would want to do could be sort of put under the Preamble and I said well if that's the case there's no reason to have the Constitution because the Constitution is fundamentally a constraint on the power of the federal government that that's actually um one of its main purposes and and so we we discuss that so contrary to popular belief the
37:10 Preamble has has no meaning in terms of interpreting the Constitution nonetheless these words are very famous and so I'm gonna I'm going to start out by reading them so the Constitution of the United States of America we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish
37:45 this constitution for the United States of America that's it that's the entire Preamble and it's really again it's just explaining why the Constitution exists okay so now I'm going to read some of the amendments in the Bill of Rights um because I think it's important we talk about like the the um First Amendment all the time but you know do we really know what it says okay so here is the first the amendment number one Congress shall make no law respecting an
38:21 establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there of or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances now I I emphasized Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof those are both contained in and and what's interesting is people of this
38:56 issue tend to advocate for one and not the other but the government is supposed to stay out of both okay and and that's an interesting aspect that I think when we talk about religious freedom that statement doesn't describe really what the first amendment is saying okay another uh the Second Amendment a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed now this is another one where there is a
39:31 short preamble to the second amendment that that people who are in favor of stricter controls on Firearms say well they only meant for firearms to be used by a militia other people say clearly historically that's not the case because um firearm ownership was widespread in the United States at the time the Constitution was formed so and and and the the latter is the interpretation that the Supreme Court has most recently taken okay um I'm going to skip
40:06 amendment number three um which talks about quartering soldiers we don't really have an issue with that these days and I'm going to talk about a the Fourth Amendment the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against reasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized this is why for
40:42 example police need to get a search warrant before they can come into your house or your office and start looking through files or other things for documents or whatever okay the fourth amendment guarantees that now I want to point out something that I've never heard talked about in in discussions about the Constitution but notice that a warrant has to be supported by an oath or affirmation why why why are both of those there why not just an oath and the
41:18 reason is because for certain religious groups um including Jews for example it's it's considered wrong to take an oath about a secular matter like this okay because it would be it would be speaking God's name in vain which is a violation of one of the ten commandments so so for example if I'm in being being sworn into court what they'll read the oath and then I say I so affirm so an affirmation has the same legal effect as
41:54 an oath but it is not the actual taking of an oath from a religious perspective and therefore it doesn't put me in a position of having taken God's name in vain so you can see that from the beginning the the framers of the Constitution were attuned to some of these issues that could have caused conflict okay uh the the Fifth Amendment okay no person shall be held to answer for a capital or other wise Infamous crime unless on a presentment or
42:31 indictment of a grand jury except in cases arising in the land or Naval forces or in the militia when an actual service in time of war or public danger nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in Jeopardy of life or limb nor shall he be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself nor be deprived of life Liberty or property without due process of law nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation so there's so much
43:08 there for example trial by jury um not the the government not being able to take your property away without paying you compensation that's a condemnation action again another controversial issue over the last well I mean it's it's it's been controversial for for all of our history but it's gotten more as as as Government governments have um taken more power so there's there's a conflict be between so-called police power and the power that the power of taking so for
43:45 example if a municipal government creates a zoning law that's so restrictive that it effectively takes away an owner ability to do anything with the property is that really something allowed as a police power or does that become a taking and therefore the government would have to pay that owner just compensation so there have been a number of cases about this um over the the decades and you know they've been decided various ways and in some cases
44:23 have made it all the way up to uh the Supreme Court okay you can also see um the the issue of Double Jeopardy so if if someone is accused of a crime let's say he's accused of murder and he's found not guilty by a jury the government that cannot turn around and try that person for the same crime now again this has been somewhat controversial so for those of you who remember the Rodney King um situation here in Los Angeles uh when Rodney King
44:58 was um beaten and injured by by some police officers so there was a big issue some people thought that the police officers were just they they they were restraining him in the line of duty and so his getting hurt was kind of like well that's what happens when you you know when you fight the police other people felt that um this that Rodney King's civil rights had been violated and and so um you know th this that that they they should be prosecuted eventually they were prosecuted here at
45:34 the at the local level and they were found not guilty um and there was so much anger from certain quarters over that the federal government then tried the police officers for the same crimes but under a different law and found them guilty and a lot of people felt that this was actually Double Jeopardy and that the the federal government shouldn't have been able to do that um to the best of my knowledge that never went to the Supreme Court um I I I think now by now all those police officers are
46:10 are are out of jail okay um and then there's some some other ones and I'm gonna this is the one I mentioned a little bit earlier the last one I'm going to read um is amendment 10 the 10th Amendment and that is the powers not not delegated to the United States by the Constitution no Pro nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people now this this is a very important Amendment oftentimes overlooked but really what
46:46 it's saying is the Federal Government Can Only exercise those powers specifically given to it in the US Constitution and this this is something that has become much more controversial of late as the current Supreme Court has looked at the Constitution from a much more what's called originalist perspective meaning going back to what does the Constitution actually say and so for example we we've seen this in the owner
47:21 overturning of the Chevron Doctrine which said that uh Congress should refer to administrative agencies in terms of how they're interpreting the laws passed by Congress that's what Chevron held that's been overturned so the court heard or the court decided in the last term that uh that that Congress sets decides the laws and a federal agency only has authority to the extent that there's a clear int tent by Congress to give that
48:00 agency that power okay and and so this this sort of large accretion of Power by federal agencies now is is slowly being Unwound in some areas um because much of what federal agencies do they have no clear mandate to do and in fact they'll sometimes take a law that was never intended to be used by that agency and they'll sort of crowbar in a power that it gives them in order for
48:35 them to expand their regulatory Authority uh likewise the federal government has at times overreached its Authority um so for example um there's a proposal for National rent control the federal government has no Authority Under the Constitution to impose National rent control now to the extent that um the federal government builds housing and keeps that housing under federal government control so of course they can control the rents there but the
49:11 federal government has no authority to impose rent control across the 50 United States that the 10th Amendment would proh the 10 the 10th Amendment prohibits that now does that mean we're not going to see an attempt at imposing uh uh rent control at the federal level we might right and now and now there'll be a a battle right between those who would say that the 10th Amendment prohibits this and those who will say that well but it's it's permitted for example the the um the Preamble for the Constitution
49:48 says promote the general welfare well this promotes the general welfare right and so if if the Federal government if the Constitution is there to promote the general welfare and it's generally good for the federal government to control rents so then the federal government should be able to do that so you can see how these kind of conflicts arise um and I just I glance at the time here just now I realized been talking a little bit longer than I meant to go but I think it's important on on this day that we do take some time to understand
50:25 how our government works as as my understanding of um education these days is there's not a whole lot of focus on these issues even at the high school level um and and so we as Citizens need to educate ourselves and so um I showed you this same book on July 4th when I read the um Declaration of Independence I'm going to put up the link to this book again again it's an affiliate link I I don't know I probably get like you know three cents if you click on the affiliate link and and buy the book but I think we all should have
51:02 this book because it has uh the three most important formative documents of the United States in it and I would encourage you to and I'm going to put up a link for the Federalist Papers also to read this book I will be honest with you it's pretty dry reading but it's also very important so maybe decide to read you know one one paper um a day or one paper a week and over the next you know couple of years even at one a week you'll end up reading all of them that would be a good goal and you'll be educated and no matter where you fall on
51:38 the interpretive spectrum of the Constitution I think we're all obligated to understand what the document says and understand not just our own reasons as to why we believe it should be interpreted a particular way but understand the reasons of the other people who interpret it differently than us understand their perspective so that we can in the spirit of the Constitution itself make compromises that allows our Republic to
52:13 endure so I thank you very much for joining me today on this special edition of the way to wow shows this Constitution Day or Constitution and citizenship day I wish you a wonderful rest of the day tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my show people making money and it's going to be our monthly edition of economic Echoes I believe right yes so we're going to talk about all of the various um economic factors and digging down into them so that we
52:48 can see how they impact us as individuals so I've got some new economic factors that I want to that I'm going to be introducing into the show tomorrow so I hope you'll join me and then next week on Monday is my show trust in Estates weekly my guest is Hillary Cooper of unclutter we're gonna be this is this will be our second show together and we're g to be talking about what to do when you walk into you know your deceased relatives house and you see all the stuff a what what am I gonna do so please join Hillary and me on
53:25 Monday at 10. these are all pacific times and then one week from today I'll be back with my regular Tuesday Morning Tuesday Show Business lessons from the military so again thank you so much for joining me have a meaningful and happy Constitution Day and citizenship day and signing off as I always do with with with great great love and affection Marie darling You Are My Bell