Crossroads: Celebrating the Constitution with Michael Farris

Hello and welcome to the Crossroads podcast. The show where Mark Mechler and Rita Peters discuss hot-button issues from a biblical perspective, helping to equip other Christians to bring light to a darkened culture. Rita is the Senior Vice President of Legislative Affairs and Mark serves as the CEO and co-founder for Convention of States Action. Find out more by visiting Convention of States.com slash park. Well hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Crossroads where faith and culture meet. I'm your host Rita Peters and I am here to talk with our guest Michael Ferris about Constitution Week today. Since 1956 our nation has observed Constitution during the week of September that follows the anniversary of the signing of our Constitution back on September 17th 1787. So today our program is all about our Constitution and why we should celebrate it. With me as I said for this discussion is returning guest Michael Ferris and because Mike has been with us a few times before and on some recent programs I'm not going to go through his entire bio again because it takes a long time. Mike has done a lot in his career but I just want to remind you for purposes of today's program that Mike is a highly esteemed constitutional lawyer, litigator, scholar, author and teacher. So we can't do much better than having Mike with us for the program. Mike welcome back. Thank you Rita it's great to be with you. So let's just dive right in and get straight to the point. Mike why is our Constitution special why is it worthy of celebration? The Constitution is of course our second governing document which started off with the Articles of Confederation that proved not to work very well. It lasted about a decade and it was it was a mess. And so the the mere fact that we have been governed under the same documents since 1789 demonstrates its brilliance. And there were a few key principles that underlined the Constitution. Number one is right in Article one, Section one, all laws are going to be made by Congress, the most numerous branch. And the reason they did this is because they had a Christian view of the nature of man and believe that men are inherently sinful. And as a consequence of that you don't want to give single man too much power. And so they wanted to divide the law making power as diffusely as possible. This is the most numerous branch with two branches of government, the Senate House, requiring the signature of the president. All those things were based on the notion that we wanted to defuse power and not give anybody too much power because with too much power our liberties are in jeopardy. So it's it's giving government the power needed to operate while protecting our liberties. And it's a fine balance. And then that balance was struck very, very well. Yeah. So we've just been joined now by my trustee co-host Mark Mechler, yet a little bit of technology difficulty this morning. But Mark, thanks for being with us. Mike was just answering my first question for our Constitution Week program. Why is our Constitution special and worthy of celebration? How would you answer that? I would say that as a document it embodies eternal principles. So and it sets forth so those principles very clearly. And so it was something that was written for all time as opposed to being a document written for a particular time. And I think that's very normal for constitutions or founding type documents. They're written based on the circumstances that had given time. But the men who wrote the United States Constitution had a deep understanding of history of human nature of the Bible. And based on a foundation of that knowledge they wrote something that was intended to last for all time. The average life of a constitution in the world today is 17 years. When you consider we're pushing up on 250 years, obviously there's something lasting about that document. Yeah, absolutely. What would you say are some of the unique features or defining features provisions in the Constitution itself that differentiate it from other constitutions? And Mike already mentioned one. I'm right there an article one that laws have to be made by Congress. But what are what are some of the other features that are unique and make our Constitution special? Well, it's the idea that government only has the powers that we give it. That's called the enumerated powers doctrine. And so in other countries, the government has all the power, unless it's limited somehow, we start with the opposite presumption. The people have the power, if we delegate certain things to the government, then they can act in that area. But without that delegation, no power. And that principle is really key to understanding the American Constitution and really the American experience. Mark? Yeah, I would say it's the fact that I'm going to speak more broadly than specifically. It's the fact that our Constitution was intended and is drafted to be wielded as a weapon against government by the people. And this ties into what Mike was saying that the powers were enumerated. There are limitations on government power set forth in our Constitution that allow us as citizens to step in and say that the government has overstepped. So this is unique. Normally, the government grants rights to its citizens through whatever it's founding charter is. In this case, in our case, that our rights are from God. We're born with these rights. And the Constitution is designed to be a weapon for us to protect those rights against an overreaching government. So, you know, when I think back on my education, you know, back in middle school, high school, when I learned about the Constitution, the things that I remember from back then that I think, you know, most Americans would say are the defining features would be enumerated powers, which Mike, you've already hit on. And then separation of powers and checks and balances. So we've talked about enumeration of powers. Talk to me a little bit about the separation of powers and checks and balances. Maybe one of you could take each of those and talk about why they're important. Mike, we'll have you go first. Well, the separation of powers to doctrine is designed again to protect liberty. And it's the idea that the same thing nobody wants to give sinful people too much power. And so the president, the executive branch, is supposed to have the power to enforce law, but not make the law. Now, obviously, that's a real issue today with executive orders in all manner of other executive kinds of orders. They have a variety there. There's six specific names that they use for various kinds of executive orders, regulations and so on. But the idea is all the same. Some branch of the executive group of government is making law. And that's not supposed to be the way is that the separation of powers is a key feature of limiting power, which is a key goal of protecting our liberties. Mark, what about checks and balances? So by creating three separate branches of government, what the framers gave us was the ability to balance power power against power, essentially, courts can limit the legislative and the executive. Obviously, the legislative has the power and should have the only power to pass laws as a representative body, especially when you're dealing with the House of Representatives, the people's house, they directly represent the people of the United States of America in that check and balance between the courts and then the executive. The executive's job, the executive branches job is to faithfully execute the laws as passed by Congress. So having those three branches offset against each other and balancing each other out in a check and balance system was a great design for our system of government. There's also one more, which is federalism, the balance of power, the check and balance provided between the states and the federal government. The states themselves are bound by the provisions of the United States Constitution. So that limits the exercise of state power. We have the supremacy clause in the Constitution, which says that that is the supreme law of the land and that the states may not violate that law, but then we also have the ability for the states to check the federal government. 10th Amendment is one of the things that was intended to do that. That's been largely unfortunately the courts have removed the power of the states. We need to restore that, but also Article 5, and we talk about this a lot, obviously, because it's what we do every day for a living, which is the ability of the states to propose amendments and then ratify amendments to restrain federal ovaries, that's sort of the ultimate check and balance. Yeah, absolutely, and it's one that most people I think don't think of when they're thinking about checks and balances, but Article 5 contains maybe the most important check on the power of government, and that is the constitutional amendment process. Mike, I want to come back to something you said a minute ago. You said, the Constitution in effect was designed for sinful people. You don't want to put too much power in the hands of sinful people. That brings me to the question, do you all think that it's pretty obvious that the framers of the Constitution were guided by their faith, their basic beliefs about God, as well as their beliefs about man and the nature of mankind. What do you think? There's no doubt of that. The Library of Congress held an exhibition 25 years ago now on the religion and the founding of America, and it was run by the man who's in charge of the presidential papers for the Library of Congress, PhD, very important scholar, and he basically says in his work that the evangelical worldview dominated. It doesn't mean that everybody held that view personally, that they were personally a follower of Jesus, but the worldview was absolutely dominant. That is, there is a God. He is a rewarder of those who do right, and a punishment of those who do wrong. There are absolute values. Those kind of basic ideas, including that man is sinful, were just absolutely dominant in those days, and people made arguments. If you read Locke, he makes scriptural arguments. His personal faith is, well, I don't know, or his personal faith was, but he makes scriptural arguments. That was the language, that was the culture, that was the worldview of the day, and it absolutely is in bread in our Constitution, very important ways. I mean, really simply, the biggest principle is the one we've talked about a lot already, and that is men are sinful, don't give him too much power. There are other ideas of justice and equality, and so on, that are blended in as well. Again, all biblical principles. Mark? Yeah, also, it's important to remember the contextual history of the time, and that this was a statement, a real strike against the idea of divine right of kings, that somehow kings were divinely appointed, that the king of England was divine, and instead what we were relying upon was man to run government, understanding that men were no angels, right? So we designed a system of government for sinful man based on a Judeo-Christian worldview. When people argue against this idea that the founders were Christians, there's a, I think, a species argument that most of the founders were deists, and certainly there are some that I think you could qualify as deists, but the vast majority were Christians of one denomination or another. They understood the world in terms of a biblical worldview. They viewed it through a scriptural lens. If you look at the history of the drafting of the Constitution and the debates around the Constitution, the number one textual reference for the men in convention was the Bible. Are in a way above anything else that was referenced during those debates, the Bible was reference. So the idea that we're not somehow a Christian country based on Judeo-Christian values is a modern fabrication. Yeah, and you know, I think it's important for people to remember everyone has a worldview, whatever it is, everyone has some kind of worldview, and your worldview will determine your view of government, the role of government, the proper functioning of government, and of course it was no different for our founding fathers. Now, a lot of people, so many of us love our Constitution and are so proud of it. A lot of people will say it was divinely inspired. How do you all answer that question? I never know quite how to tackle that one in part of it is because I'm never quite sure what the person means when they say that. So how do you all answer that question if someone asks you, was the Constitution divinely inspired? Well, I would say no in the sense that the Bible is divinely inspired. It sits unique atop everything else. There's no equal. Now, having said that, God directs the fears of men. And so in that general sense, God was not absent from the process, but I think that the biggest and proper claim to the religious influence of the Constitution is what we've already said, and that is they had a Christian worldview. They brought that worldview into the document, and it reflects those basic principles. And it's the reason it's been successful. If you align with the truth of how the creator that created this, and you create systems that are based on his truths, you're going to get a better system. And if you create a system based on some other theory of how the world works. But for those of us that take a really strong view of scripture, calling anything else divinely inspired is a danger point. Yeah. Mark, would you agree with that? Yeah, you know, I think you hit something really important. The question is what do people mean when they ask that? And so I think we have to be very careful to make sure that we're using language properly. I agree with Mike, the only divinely inspired document, specifically scripture. However, the men that were in the hall when they were drafting that Constitution, those men relied upon divine inspiration. They prayed for divine guidance. There's a moment in convention when Ben Franklin specifically reminds them that they they called on the hand of providence on God's hand of providence during the revolutionary war. And they hadn't been doing so in convention. And he called for them to begin each day with prayer and to call for God's hand on the convention. So I think, well, we can't necessarily say that the document was divinely inspired. Certainly, the men who were in that hall debating and drafting that document were calling upon God's wisdom and guidance. Yeah, absolutely. Now, another thing and it's sort of related or along the same lines. And it's something that all three of us run into regularly with the work that we do, which is, you know, we're working toward an article five convention for the states to propose constitutional amendments to basically rein in and out of control federal government. And we run into these people who say, oh, I love the Constitution. We don't want to open up the Constitution. The Constitution, you know, basically say that they say the Constitution is perfect. We don't want to do anything to it. We don't want to change it. What are your thoughts on that? Is the Constitution perfect? Well, I sure hope they like the first amendment and the amendment and so on. We've changed the Constitution 27 times. And one of them was to correct an amendment. And so it's not perfect, but it's great. And so, and the amendment process article five is how the founders expected us to use is the tool that the founders expected us to use when the federal government's out of control. So it's a really simple analysis. Is the federal government out of control? Yes or no? Well, the answer of any sensible American is yes. And so what's the tool the founder gave us to stop that? It's article five. And if you don't want to use the very tool the founders gave us, you're on the one hand, you're saying, well, they're really wise, but then on the other hand, you're saying, well, no, they're dangerously crazy. And so you can't have it both ways. Either they were wise or they were dangerously crazy. And I think they were wise in all instances. And so, so anyhow, it's so silly, but it's it's believed by a lot of good people. And that's what's distressing. That's what makes it not silly, but you know, rather it's tragic that good people get bound up by this superficial analysis and nonsense. Yeah. So Mark, how do you deal with that because it is often people whom we would otherwise, you know, agree with on most things that have this philosophy of, you know, oh, I love the constitution. We can't, you know, we can't allow it to be changed. It's too wonderful. How do you deal with that? Well, generally speaking, they would call themselves originalists or textualists. I call it contextualists. In other words, I want to know in context of the times what the framers were actually thinking and they were pretty clear about it. And they told us that they didn't believe that they had drafted a perfect document. They told us that they had done the best they could with the knowledge that they had at the time. But they also expected that people like us would come later on who had had different experiences and more experiences and would add our wisdom to the document where the document might prove to be insufficient. I think there are interesting things in the document that the framers didn't even deal with. Like really, they didn't deal with the federal courts very much. They didn't have experience in a federal court system. The part of the constitution setting up the courts is very short and small because they didn't have a lot of experience with it. They didn't deal with term limits because that wasn't something they thought they would ever need. People didn't go to get into politics and generally speaking and spend their entire life doing nothing but politics. Most of the men who were drafting the constitution had other careers. They were farmers and merchants and doctors and lawyers and so there are things that they didn't anticipate and they knew that they couldn't anticipate because they weren't fortune tellers. They did the best they could and they gave us a mechanism whereby we could correct any defects that we found over time. And certainly we've gotten to the point where defects are showing themselves because the federal government is out of control. Yeah. Well, along those lines, what do you think the framers, the the men who did the hard work and you know made the compromise and hashed out all the language of the constitution that we have? What do you think they would think about how we've done with their work? Have we would they think we followed the constitution well? Would they be disappointed in us? What would surprise them about how the constitution has been used and interpreted? They would take their walking sticks and beat the tarot. Why why Mike? We have let the federal government boil us like the you know the old frog in this food story. We we've been boiled over time into a government that I mean just just the debt. I mean there's so much more than the debt but just the debt is enough of an indicator that we are absolutely out of our every love and minds and and so they would look at this and say what are you guys thinking about? And and so I think that you know those of us that have been working on Article 5 would avoid the sticks. We would we would not be we would be you know commended and so but they believed in freedom and they know that freedom and limited government go hand in hand. You can't have a massive government and a free people. It's just simple. Yeah. Mark your thoughts? Yeah I agree you know I imagine myself often sitting with Dr Franklin Benjamin Franklin you know he was old and cantonkeryst by the time I've convention he traveled all over the world in a time when most people didn't travel to the next town. So he'd been in multiple colonies multiple states all over the world and I think he would be furious with us because they gave us a tool to use in peace. These were men that had seen revolution. These are men that had seen violence in their own cities in their own towns and they had shed blood and families had been lost. Ben Franklin himself divided from his son over the American Revolution. So they had been willing to make the greatest of sacrifices to give us protections for these freedoms with which they are creator and endowed us and they had protected in this constitution and the idea that we would not use the mechanism that they gave us to protect those freedoms. I think Dr Franklin would be outraged and I think even those of us trying to use Article 5 would frustrate him in the sense that it just hadn't happened yet. It would be stunned that we were this far into our history and that we had not used the second clause of Article 5. Yeah I would agree with that. I want to ask you about something specific. What do you think they would think about the fact that state senators or you I'm sorry US senators are now directly elected by the people instead of being chosen by the states? What do you think they would would they think were crazy for doing that? Would they think that really just ruined the careful balance of power that they crafted? Well it certainly took the states out of any meaningful role in several areas where they could check and balance the federal government. The states effectively had control over appointments, appointments to the Supreme Court and so on. States had effective control over treaties and by doing the direct election of senators we gave all that up. Now the reason we gave up the direct election or gave up state-appointment of senators is it become a corrupt process. State legislators were selling US Senate seats and so again we get sinful people and we needed to do something about that but I think we adopted the wrong approach or at least if we're going to do that we need to change the things you know like okay if we're going to have direct election of senators let's now have state legislatures ratify treaties. Let's have state legislatures. They didn't fix the problem in this entirety they went off and put a bandaid on the problem and it really hasn't helped things in the long run. Mark I'm going to come to you with a little bit of a different question. How well do you think modern-day Americans understand the constitution and maybe what aspects of it do you think are most misunderstood? Yeah I mean I think when we talk about modern-day Americans I need to parse that a little bit as somebody who travels the country constantly Mike does the same thing and Rick Santorum does the same thing you talk to Americans all over the country the folks that we know they understand the constitution really well and I'm really impressed and encouraged because there has been over my 15 years in politics an incredible uptick in the number of people who study and understand the constitution and based on its original meaning broadly speaking I don't think the population understands it well at all I would say at a fundamental level the biggest symptom of this is the use of the term democracy you hear this used by politicians you hear it used by the talking heads you see it written that our quote unquote democracy is a state well we don't live in a democracy and the founders are very very firm in this that they understood democracy to mean direct democracy and mob rule and they created a constitutional republic based on the idea of federalism it's very different than a democracy so this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the structures and the philosophy of our system of governance yeah okay last question Mike I know that you have to catch a plane I'm gonna let you go first what what do you hope people will do to observe constitution week you know we hear the next week as constitution week what are people supposed to do what what would you want people to do sign the petition to join in the convention of states process because you know I can tell you you know go read the constitution I have a 25 episode constitution literacy course go you know go by my course I don't I've sold the copyright of that so I don't get any money from that anymore I do those things but study read all good but take some action to defend it and the best actions to defend it is to join the article five process because if you want to have the constitution as it was intended actually enforce again this is the very best thing you can possibly do absolutely if you want to sign that petition it's at conventionofstates.com you can also learn everything you need to know about the convention of states movement right there um mark let me get your answer and then we're gonna say goodbye to Mike I mean of course I would agree with Mike getting involved in convention of states but I would say if you're serious dig into the constitution not just read it read the federalist papers read reviews or explanations of the federalist papers it's important to understand what the framers were thinking when they drafted the United States and the federalist papers will tell you you might want to read if you're serious about to read the anti federalist papers as well and understand the arguments against the ratification of the United States Constitution this is the best way to get your foundational understanding of the way that our system of governance was designed. Couldn't agree more Michael Ferris thank you for being our guest today on Crossroads and we hope you'll be back again soon and mark thanks for being back with me I'm hoping we'll be co-hosting together more regularly again now that the summer's over but good to have you back looking forward to more. I want to thank our generous sponsors at Blue Ridge chimney services Blessings Christian bookstore Sunshine ministries with Christian radio wishing well florists and travel services and our friends at new beginnings church and garbage church of the brethren in Harrisonburg thanks everyone for listening today and for your encouragement and your continued financial support if you'd like to make a donation to help keep crossroads on the air you can do so by check to crossroads at PO box 881 Harrisonburg Virginia 22803 I'm Rita Peters with Mark Mechler inviting you to join us again next week for another edition of crossroads where faith and culture meet thank you for listening to the crossroads podcast to learn more about convention of states go to conventionofstakes.com