read some stuff for Rich

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+FDR during a fireside chat recommended the American public to read and
+reread the constitution.
+
+Its language isn't particularly complex, but it is often deliberately
+ambiguous and increasingly settled by jurisprudence and precedence.
+Its context sometimes helps clear things up:
+- Notes kept by Constitutional Convention participants
+- Federalist papers
+- Correspondences of delegates and leaders
+- Anti-Federalist tracts
+
+Believed deeply in political theory
+- Social contract, government by the consent of the governed
+- Legitimacy for self-government from constitution
+- Wanted civil liberty (freedom except detriment to common weal)
+- Used written constitutions to ensure consent of governed
+
+Even anti-federalists were committed to republicanism and personal
+liberty.
+Both sides accepted political science and the multiple interests in
+government and the importance of preserving public opinion.
+Anti-federalists feared the absence of a bill of rights, "unrestrained
+power," and the possible development of an aristocracy, that helped make
+the Constitution a good compromise.
+
+- Happiness an important factor
+Social contract:
+    - People govern the people
+        - Didn't want to be "enslaved" by the British (Lockean analogy)
+    - Actual slavery was a huge compromise
+        - When James Madison's sealed notes released after 50 years,
+          (1788+50 -> 1840) it was revealed that huge compromises were
+          made for SC and GA.
+
+American Constitution is oldest national constitution in the world.
+- Essentially an usurpation of authority by the Phil. Convention
+- Incredibly stable, not even second convention because of worries about
+  weakening it
+    - Permanent in the minds of citizens
+    - State constitutions, by contrast, are unstable, long, and lightly
+      changed
+- Ambiguities that were left in constitution -> judicial leeway (room
+  for much more fluid changes than a constitutional amendment)
+- Tested by constitutional crisis of 1860 (civil war/secession)
+
+Democratic constitutionalism implies concerted effort of the citizens.