US Constitutional System
The US Constitution is a remarkable document that is designed to preserve the liberty and freedom of the people by keeping the power in check of those who fill the offices of the federal government. But to have a single focus on the US Constitution alone and not the whole US Constitutional System is a fatal mistake. We have been living with the results of this fatal mistake in the United States for over 100 years.
The US Constitution provides for “checks and balances” and “separation of powers” that when applied serve as safeguards against designing men and women who seek to expand their power.
This is well and good, but it actually overlooks what the founders saw as an even more important tool for maintaining freedom and liberty and that is the “vertical separation of power”. That is the distribution of governing power beginning at the local level, to county, to state, to national level with each higher level of government having less and less power. Notably, the founders gleaned this model of distributed power from Exodus 18:21 where Jethro, Moses father in law, provided this advice.
But select capable men from all the people–men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain–and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.
This is what makes up the strength and brilliance of the US Constitutional System.
This video set overviews the U.S. Constitutional System including the checks and balances at a federal level, but also the role of States, County, and Local governments in the vertical Separation of Powers. Focusing on the entire “System” is intentional, as you cannot properly understand the Federal Constitution itself, if you do not understand how the whole “System” was designed to work.
- Constitutional Studies 01 – Designed to Protect Liberty ~ Checks & Balances of Power-15m
- Constitutional Studies 02 – All Three Branches Safeguard Constitution-7m
- Constitutional Studies 03 – States and People Final Authority-6m
- Constitutional Studies 04 – The American Constitutional System – Vertical Separation of Power-6m
- Constitutional Studies 05 – Vertical Separation – Diversity v. Conformity-4m
- Constitutional Studies 06 – Vertical Separation – The Beauty of Local Government – 7m
- Constitutional Studies 07 – Vertical Separation – Resisting the Accumulation of Power – 9m
- Constitutional Studies 08 – Vertical Separation – Example of State Supreme Court resisting US Supreme Court – 7m
Note - on some of our printed literature we direct people to this page of the website to discover the answer to the question of which of these phrases is correct - "The United States are at a Crossroads" OR "The United States is at a Crossroads".
This is a very nuanced by significant difference.
The sentence "The United States are at a Crossroads" would have aligned with what the founders believed. That the United States was a federal republic made up of Independent States joined together. In this case, the word "are" is the proper use indicating the sovereignty of the States and is aligned with much of the content on these pages that describe The US Constitutional System.
The phrase "The United States is at a Crossroads" is a view that the national government trumps the State governments and they States are merely administrative units of the federal government.
Both phrases are used in our culture without much thought given between the difference between the two. But now you know the rest of the story.