Dr Dave's 3 step process to becoming a Constitutional expert.

The Constitution is actually pretty easy to understand. It takes a Constitutional scholar or Politician to obfuscate things in an intellectually intimidating fashion to make it overwhelming to the average person. Here's my completely unintellectual, but effective 3 Step process to accurate Constitutional understanding:

1. Read the actual words of the Constitution. Think about them. Do not attempt to make them fit any predisposition you may have. Think about them some more.
2. Look up the meaning of words that are unclear to you using a dictionary that was used around the time the Constitution was written. Think about those definitions. Consider what they would have meant to a very brave independent-minded person who was very much under the thumb of a desperate foreign king.
3. To further clarify terms or concepts, read and analyze other writings of the Founders. This is an incredible help in attempting to understand the original intent of the Founders. They wrote many communications to each other and the public that provides tremendously detailed background and explanations of their thinking. The dictionary mentioned in Step Two can be helpful here as well. Again, read the actual words.

That's it! You take a couple of months to leisurely, thoughtfully go through that 3 step process, and you will have a better understanding than the vast majority of todays supposed Constitutional scholars.

Here are some excerpts from one of my favorite Founders writings that are very clarifying and pertinent to the Constitutional crisis we now find ourselves in:

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,” -James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

"…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison