Bakker Bugle Blog

Today is Constitution Day in the USA. How will you celebrate the 220th anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution by the delegates of the (First) Constitutional Convention? The US president wishes to:

encourage Federal, State, and local officials, as well as leaders of civic, social, and educational organizations, to conduct ceremonies and programs that celebrate our Constitution and reaffirm our rights and responsibilities as citizens of our great Nation.

What’s your favorite part of the Constitution? Mine is the 14th Amendment. I especially like Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The rest of the 14th Amendment is great, too. Section 2 is touching, in light of the events leading to the amendment’s passage (and the rocky road to implementing it, one which we walk still).

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

If you missed the opportunity to celebrate Constitution Day, don’t worry — it’s Constitution Week until September 23rd!