A lot of great points in this article. Why do we as a country put so much emphasis on people reciting the pledge vs knowing the Constitution and the Amendments? The below paragraph really stood out to me as a way to frame the Constitution.

I like to read the Constitution as a three-part document: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of 1787, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This establishes the Constitution as the institutional fulfillment of a philosophical statement, and one that is still growing into its promise. Fellow nerds will complain that there are more than three documents… touché! A fuller understanding requires a reading of earlier philosophy (Locke, Montesquieu, Milton, and others); the Federalist Papers; the Articles of Confederation; and the Constitution of the Confederate States (though it was born of grievous sin, it did address a century of constitutional learning, and addressed both federal overreach and a scandalously latitudinarian reading of the Commerce Clause).