President Ronald Reagan and the Constitution of the United States of America
“All those other constitutions in the world are documents in which the government tells the people what they
can do. And our Constitution is one in which we the people tell the Government what it can do, and it can do
nothing other than what is prescribed in that document.”
—Ronald Reagan, September 10, 1987
Every day, the devastating turmoil in Egypt and Syria continues to spiral out of control as the nation’s
citizens struggle in pursuit of a democratic government. How will this crisis be resolved? “When given
freedom to choose,” President Reagan stated, “people choose freedom.” In America, we pray that all those
who inhabit the earth have the opportunity to live freely, to transcend their differences, and to be protected by
the checks, balances, and institutions of a democratic government.
1 Watching good souls who seek freedom heightens our appreciation for what we have in America. So, we
are called with great passion to study and embrace the principles of our blueprint for liberty on Constitution
Day, September 17, a day that honors the document’s adoption 226 years ago. “I call upon all citizens to join
in studying the events and documents surrounding the adoption of our Constitution in 1787,” President
Reagan implored, “with renewed learning of the history and purpose of this Charter of Freedom.”
It used to be called “I Am an American Day.” What is the history of Constitution Day, and what were
the essential principles of that historic document championed by our 40th president?
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of
our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal,
but to all who love these great and true principles.”
—Abraham Lincoln, August 27, 1856
The History of Constitution Day
Although citizens of the United States have celebrated Independence Day and Presidents’ Day since the
1870s, Constitution Day did not become official until 2005. Also known as Citizenship Day, it is an American
holiday honoring September 17, 1787, the day the 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the
United States Constitution.
“We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land—nor, perhaps, the sun or the stars. But
there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey.
The chart is the Constitution.”
—Daniel Webster
The first initiative began when publisher William Randolph Hearst suggested a holiday to celebrate
American citizenship in 1939. Because Hearst owned many daily newspapers and had political connections to
boot, “I Am an American Day” was quickly designated as the third Sunday in May. Within ten years, governors
of the then 48 states had issued proclamations in agreement with the national holiday.
2 The May date, however, was unacceptable to Ohio resident Olga Weber, who in 1952 petitioned the
nation’s leaders to change the date of the holiday so that it fell on the anniversary of the Constitution’s signing.
In 1953, Mrs. Weber appeared before Congress, and her request was approved. “I Am an American Day”
became “Citizenship Day” in 1953 and was moved to September 17.
The last step was taken in 1997 by Louise Leigh who had studied at the National Center for
Constitutional Studies. To spread her love of the Constitution throughout the country, she founded a nonprofit
organization called Constitution Day, Inc., to help encourage recognition of the national holiday’s importance.
In May of 2005, the Department of Education backed a law stipulating that the head of every federal agency
provide employees with educational materials concerning the Constitution every September 17 and that each
educational institution that receives federal funds should hold a program for students every Constitution Day. It
was official. Constitution Day was born!
The Essential Ronald Reagan and Limited Government
“You and I in our lifetimes can remember our only contact at one time with the federal government was to
go to the post office and buy a stamp. Today, the hand of
government rule and regulations reaches into almost every phase of our daily lives.”
—Ronald Reagan, 1958
“For the first time in all man’s history, a government was created on the basis that you and I have within
ourselves the God-given right and ability to determine our own destiny. They shaped the government; they
bound it into a constitution. And they said that you and I had God-given rights and freedoms. We are
beholden to no government for those freedoms.”
—Ronald Reagan, June 1962
From Ronald Reagan’s Perch: A View of Limited Government
It is central to understanding what California’s 33rd governor and America’s 40th president believed: the
U.S. Constitution was an inspired document that defined the essential political framework for a free society. It
3 established a system consisting of several key components meant to limit the power of government. The
separation of powers was intended to prevent excessive concentration of power within the federal government,
and here’s the real gist: whatever powers the Constitution did not grant the central government were reserved
for the states. And the federal judiciary? Its job was purely to interpret the Constitution as it was written.
Otherwise, as Reagan asked, “why have a written constitution?” Like Alexander Hamilton, President Reagan
understood that the federal judiciary should exercise “judgment, not will.”
Judgment or will notwithstanding, by the ’60s, citizen Reagan believed that our basic constitutional
order had been critically weakened. The growing behemoth of the administrative “state” had eroded democratic
accountability and self-government. As such, the separation of powers was compromised when administrative
agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and OSHA received the
gift of power and used it to legislate. According to historian Andrew Busch, “by the 1970s, a common
explanation given for the increased advantage accruing to incumbency was that members of Congress had
largely traded legislating for constituency service. Federal courts had increasingly substituted their wills for
those of elected representatives on matters that were arguably more of a policy than a constitutional character,
ranging from school integration to abortion.”
In his 1990 autobiography, President Reagan wrote: “We had strayed a great distance from our founding
fathers’ vision of America: they regarded the central government’s responsibility as that of providing national
security, protecting our democratic freedoms, and limited the government’s intrusion into our lives — in sum,
the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They never envisioned vast agencies in Washington
telling our farmers what to plant, our teachers what to teach, our industries what to build. The Constitution they
wrote established sovereign states, not administrative districts of the federal government.”
“If the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation is not the guide to expounding
it, there can be no security for a faithful exercise of its powers.”
—James Madison
From the Oval Office: Action in the White House
Ronald Reagan’s primary objective as president was clear: to rebuild the essential principles of our
Constitution on the public agenda. Restoring a constitutional view of our government as a limited government
of carefully enumerated powers was critical; moreover, he wished to focus on subjects of unquestionable
national scope, such as defense, diplomacy, and commerce. To clarify his aims, President Reagan noted that in
the constitutions of other countries, “the government tells the people what they can do.” While the U.S.
Constitution is one “in which we the people tell the government what it can do, and it can do nothing other than
what is prescribed in that document.” Good-bye, New Deal.
How did he go about accomplishing this? There were three ways. First and foremost, he imposed
comprehensive domestic spending cuts coupled with spending restraint. Many of the Great Society’s social
welfare programs were slashed based on the idea that the enumeration of powers guided the evaluation and
therefore, the reduction of federal spending priorities.
Secondly, he ramped up defense spending. For President Reagan, the most critical function of any
limited government was protecting the nation from its enemies; defense, accordingly, was given a larger share
of the budget. Note that domestic spending fell as a percentage of total federal spending.
The last piece of the “limiting government puzzle” involved tax cuts and reform, both of which forced
the government to set spending priorities among Federal programs. According to Busch, “No longer were
4 proponents of spending able to escape the burden of defending it in reference to the essential functions of
government.”
Although many people have argued over the net results, one thing cannot be denied: “Before 1980, the
burden of proof was on those resisting the expansion of the federal government; during the Reagan years, it was
on those seeking the expansion.”
“Young as our country is, we’re really, though, the oldest republic in the world.
I know that, what with some of the budget bills, Presidents have days when they think the
Constitution created one branch of government too many.”
—Ronald Reagan, June 1, 1987
From a Post-Presidential Perspective: The Future
As a citizen, governor, president, and post-president, Ronald Reagan was most concerned about the
future. He would tell schoolchildren that “the Constitution plays a part in guiding each of your lives.” He
wanted them to embrace the Constitution as a living document, to understand that when the Founding Fathers
met in Philadelphia, “they were thinking of the future. They were thinking of the kind of country they wanted to
leave for their children and their children’s children.”
Therefore, as Ronald Reagan advised, it’s been “back to the dinner table.” On this Constitution Day, as
others around the globe risk their lives in pursuit of freedom, let us take what we can from those braves souls
who in 1787 took the first step to create a distinct and honorable blueprint for a democratic society. Recall that
in President Reagan’s farewell address, he said, “Let me offer lesson number one about America: all great
change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And
children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em
on it. That would be a very American thing to do.”
What’s on the menu tonight? Hot dogs, apple pie, and, yes, the Constitution.
“Let us then turn this government into the channel
in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.”
—Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1858
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