W. Cleon Skousen - The Making of America - The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution

by W. Cleon Skousen

Copyright 1985 by W. Cleon Skousen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this work may be copied or reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the author or publisher.

eBook-format ISBN 978-0-934364-66-9

Print-format ISBN 978-0-88080-017-4

This electronic version is Copyright 1998, 2016 by Verity Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Originally published by

The National Center for Constitutional Studies

Washington, D.C.

• 1. otes

le:pos:fid:0057:off:000000005R" aid="1T1KF">Chapter Footnotes
1. 1. Chapter TwelveThe Senateol>
   2. violation of the law which led to his impeachment.
   3. :pos:fid:0076:off:00000002B3" aid="1T28T">Minimizing the Curse of Bribery and Corruption
   4. Taxation
   5. 1. 1T2MV">Congress Must Have This Authority
   6. 1. T2S5">This Provision Designed to Keep Government in the Hands of the People
   7. 1. /li>
   8. ericans Do Not Believe the President Can Do No Wrong
   9. f:000000002K" aid="1T3E2">Principle #180 (from Article III.2.2): In all cases affecting ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.

ple #207 (from Article V.1): No amendment to the Constitution can alter the reservation set forth in Article I, section 9, clause 4, which states that there will be no restriction on the importation of slaves before 1808.
1. nt. A quorum for the purpose of choosing a Vice President shall be at least two-thirds of the whole number of Senators. A majority of those in attendance will constitute a sufficient number to elect the Vice President.
2. 1. ="1T3V9">How the Cute Little Monkey Grew into a Gorilla
gress will then have twenty-one days to reach a conclusion. Meanwhile, the Vice President shall continue to occupy the position of acting President. After an appropriate investigation, the Congress will then cast its vote and the President shall resume his office unless two-thirds of both houses vote against him.

They created the first free people to survive as a nation in modern times.

They wrote a new kind of Constitution, which is now the oldest in existence.

They built a new kind of commonwealth designed as a model for the whole human race.

They believed it was thoroughly possible to create a new kind of civilization, providing freedom, equality, and justice for all.

They envisioned a vast commonwealth of freedom which would encompass all North America, and accommodate, as John Adams said, two to three hundred million freemen.

They created an expansive new cultural climate that gave eagles wings to the human spirit.

They encouraged exploration and technology to reveal the secrets of the universe.

They built a free-enterprise culture to promote millions of jobs and unprecedented prosperity.

They invented, for the world as well as themselves, a whole new formula for happiness and success.

They offered the human race a potential future filled with the ultimate hope of the human hearta world of universal freedom, universal prosperity, and universal peace.

W. Cleon Skousen was born in Canada but came to the United States with his family at the age of ten. He subsequently spent two years in Mexico and two years in England. He graduated from San Bernardino College in California and then attended the George Washington University Law School, where he received his Juris Doctor degree. He was admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the District Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court.

His professional background includes sixteen years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, four years as chief of police of Salt Lake City, and ten years as a university professor.

Dr. Skousen is well known as an author. Seven of his many books have been used as college texts, and several have been translated and published in other countries.

He is the founder of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, which originated in 1971, and is publisher of the Centers monthly magazine, The Constitution.

Dr. Skousen and his wife, the former Jewel Pitcher of San Bernardino, California, are the parents of eight children.

This book was written to fill a special need.

For many years in the United States there has been a gradual drifting away from the Founding Fathers original success formula. This has resulted in some of their most unique contributions for a free and prosperous society becoming lost or misunderstood. Therefore, there has been a need to review the history and development of the making of America in order to recapture the brilliant precepts which made Americans the first free people in modern times.

It seems highly significant that there does not seem to have been any other time in recent centuries when circumstances were so favorably disposed to revealing the correct principles for a free and prosperous society as during the Revolutionary War period and the years immediately following. The fact that the Founders perceived and captured these precepts in the structure of a written constitution is a lasting credit to their diligence and concern for future generations. It would be a disastrous loss to all humanity if these great principles were allowed to become neglected or lost.

The National Center for Constitutional Studies was created in order to revive and popularize those original American concepts in all of their initial brilliance and vitality. The very fact that many of them are becoming obscure and misunderstood simply emphasizes the urgency and importance of the task.

The study for The Making of America actually extended over a period of more than forty years, but an organized effort to present this information in a published text has been a concerted endeavor of the past fourteen years. I am very grateful to all of those who have assisted so generously to bring this work into final fruition.

Very early in this study it became apparent that the greatly admired tapestry of the United States Constitution consisted of many more individual gold and silver threads than most scholars had identified. Altogether there are 286 of these threads in the Constitution and its amendments. Each one of these creates a right for some element of the American society. As each principle is set forth in the text, we have identified the right connected with it. We have also carefully examined each of these principles to determine why the Founders considered it to be of substantive importance. This made it necessary to glean {p. x} from the voluminous writings of the Founders their particular comments concerning each of these precepts.

Some of these principles have been slightly paraphrased rather than quoted from the actual text of the Constitution. This has been done in order to provide a stronger emphasis of the concept or to state it more clearly. In each case, however, the constitutional paragraph from which it is taken is cited.

It should also be mentioned that certain statements from the Founders are presented in the third person. This is because these were taken from James Madisons notes on the Constitutional Convention debates, which often provide summaries of what was said rather than actual quotations.