'Oh, that Constitution...'

Michael Barone on the renewed attention paid by ordinary Americans to what the Constitution really says.

Here's my suggestion: school kids should be required to memorize and understand the Bill of Rights, Fourteenth Amendment, and critical clauses (enumerated powers, etc), in the same way and with the same rigor that they now must memorize multiplication tables, etc.

Students should memorize the salient portions of the Declaration as well. As the Supreme Court noted in 1897:

The Constitution is the body and letter of which the Declaration of Independence is the thought and the spirit, and it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. 

The Constitution itself connects itself to the Declaration of Independence by dating itself from the date of the Declaration of Independence, thereby showing clearly that it is the second great document in the government of these United States and is not to be understood without the first.

Every high school graduate should know this by heart:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Constitution and the Declaration belong to us-- ordinary citizens-- and we must insist that our elected and appointed leaders obey in letter and spirit.

We cannot protect our rights if we don't know what they are.