Flag Pin -- Constitution -- From A Liberal View

The answer, I think, is that the flag is about emotion, while the Constitution is about complicated concepts.

The flag is great for raising goosebumps at patriotic parades, but it’s the Constitution that gives us the right to speak our minds, to embrace the religions of our choice, to be tried in courts of law by juries of our peers, and to enjoy our many other hard-won freedoms.

That explains much of the foundation of liberal philosophy. The center of all is the government not the people that grant the government all of its power --

But the flag doesn’t give us the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. The Constitution does.

RRStar Applesauce Blog

My reply:

Strange thing is that the flag is a symbol of that constitution as well as the declaration of independence and everything since our founding.

Oh and not to quibble, but:

it’s the Constitution that gives us the right to speak our minds, to embrace the religions of our choice, to be tried in courts of law by juries of our peers, and to enjoy our many other hard-won freedoms.

Isn’t quite what our Founding Fathers understood to be, self-evident:

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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

The Creator give the rights, the people loan the power to Governments to secure the rights and the Constitution is a contract empowering yet restricting that government.

Modern liberalism would just state that the rights come from the people, I am not sure what political belief says the Constitution gives anything.

The Constitution actually restricts the governments actions — and does not give anything. After all it says “Congress shall make no law,” never does it say, “This Constitution hereby grants the right.”

The government derives its power from the Constitution and Constitution derives its power from the the people.

As someone who has been in the news/talk industry, often as a columnist, most of my adult life he should know that the words we use matter.

DKK