Step-by-Step Organizer Toolkit for the People's Campaign for the Constitution
Honing the Message of the PCC and Challenging the “War on Terror” Rhetoric
The People’s Campaign for the Constitution seeks to persuade the public to embrace the positive and straightforward idea of defending the Constitution. This message goes head-to-head with the message of the so-called “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) – that government's supreme purpose is to ensure “homeland security” even if that means sacrificing constitutional rights and other constitutional limits on executive power. While proponents of the GWOT claim virtually unlimited powers to detain people, spy on the population, and invade and occupy other countries, our message is that the Constitution is government’s institutional commitment to abide by limits that prevent abuse of power and guarantee people certain fundamental rights and liberties. Appealing to the Constitution as the justification for our demands carries moral weight in public, because most Americans still care about these principles and recognize them as the stated purpose of our government.
The Constitution doesn’t speak for itself; it must be interpreted, which is to say applying constitutional principles to current issues involves argument. Judges and legal scholars have claimed a special role to interpret the Constitution for us, but political pressures affect what they choose to emphasize or ignore.
Regular people can interpret too. Like judges and scholars, making a convincing interpretation requires knowledge of the Constitution, but obtaining that knowledge is easy once we claim the right to speak about it. While we can’t expect all interpretations to agree, we can help shift the public debate by raising people’s expectations that public officials interpret the Constitution honestly.
The message of the People’s Campaign for the Constitution promotes certain general understandings of the Constitution that drive our specific demands. We want to change the relationship between the people and the government in order to fully realize the promise of the Constitution, which is that:
- Government serves at the pleasure of the people -- not the President.
- People are guaranteed certain fundamental and inalienable rights as stated in the Bill of Rights.
- Each branch of government keeps the others in check to prevent the corrosive abuse of power.
- The rule of law allows nobody, including the President, to behave in a manner unaccountable to the laws by which everyone else is bound.