Constitution Day, or ELSE

A recent law passed by the federal government requires any school receiving federal funds to hold a Constitution-related activity on Constitution Day (Sep. 17th). Since that falls on a Saturday this year, the government is being courteous enough to allow the schools to choose to have the activity either the week before or after September 17th.

This delightfully ironic law was snuck into the 658 page "Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005". It fits nicely onto page 447 covering half the width of about 1/4 of a single page. Well thought out indeed. The best part about it is that, if effective to its own end, it will only inform the people that it is unconstitutional.

Moreover, it doesn’t just pertain to public schools. Many private schools receive small portions of public funding as well. My brother’s private Catholic
school was forced to acquiesce to this legislation. The law was only put into action on May 24th of this year. The difficulty in finding that this part of the legislation even existed forced his school and many others to go with a simple ‘reading’ of the Constitution.

This ‘reading’ shows how insane the law becomes when followed. I was enjoying such descriptive terms as “in-dick-tament” (indictment) and “for-two-fur” (forfeiture) while it was quite apparent that they had not even looked at the document before getting up on stage wearing their fake wigs. It was disgusting. The government has no right to tell institutions of learning to put away whatever their curriculum is for the sake of the government's curriculum.

To quote Thomas Jefferson: "If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread." The same is undoubtedly going to happen here. When the government tells us what to read and learn, our nation will become stupider by the second. This should be quite apparent with failing schools across the country. It becomes tiresome when telling the truth is no longer politically correct. If I want the government to stay off my lawn and out of my kid’s head, then why can’t I do that?

The major supporting argument for this is that we’re teaching them anyway, and this is just to make sure we teach them the right things. This argument is flawed in the very sense that we shouldn’t be forcing people to go to school who don’t want to be there. We shouldn’t be teaching them to begin with. I don’t see “Congress has the power to make public schools” anywhere in the Constitution. Not only that, but Congress has made schooling mandatory. Add that to Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” and we have some run down, overcrowded, learning impaired public schooling.

‘‘But think of the children!” I already have. There are 4-year-olds shooting and killing other children. We shouldn’t be dragging them to schools where they’re just going to learn the same gang mentality they get on the streets. Public libraries are allowed via the Constitution. Let them (and their parents) teach themselves. Forced education about the Constitution is most certainly not the answer.

The worst part is that I can’t decide whether I’m outraged or just dumbfounded. The ignorance required to enact such a law is downright comedic. A quick run through the most basic points of the Constitution informs us that Congress doesn’t have the ability to force curriculum on anyone. Amendment X is my favorite of all the amendments ignored constantly by every branch of our government. It reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Ignoring this is so common to us now that we forget how important this document was.

This is, of course, the opposing argument. To claim that the importance of the Constitution mandates such a law to teach our children about it only one day a year is ignorant. The importance of the Constitution warrants year- round study and an understanding of economics. It is not justification to unnecessarily expand the federal government. It, in itself, is the only restraint we have on that same government. Don’t be fooled by the propaganda, this law is a bad one.

The Constitution itself is the reason we should fight this law. If you know the Constitution, you know how unjust this law is. Because of that, I sharply disagree with this lousy piece of legislation. The Constitution is a wonderful document that should be on display at every public library. But it has no place being forced into a shoddily thrown together play for a simple legal requirement to keep stealing taxpayer funds. Those who wrote it are rolling over in their graves today.