 Do you know what today is? Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today is Constitution Day. This is the day that we remember that the United States Constitution was signed into law and ratified and really the beginning of the nation, right? Prior to that we had fought a revolution, then we had the Articles of Confederation for a while, didn't really work out, and then they established the United States Constitution which has been the governing document of this nation up until today. When I can, I like to remember to post a video on today to remind everybody that it's Constitution Day, and this year, as I was thinking about it, I think I have really, really conflicting feelings about it. On one hand, we have the Constitution, which is the most liberty-based government document ever created in the history of mankind, ever. There is no system of government that comes even close to the cherishing of liberty and the cherishing of individual rights over the power of government like the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution was a document that was written entirely to restrict the powers of government. That's what it was designed to do. It was designed to set up competing branches of government that would be a check on each other's power so that the government could not grow too large and could not control your life. That was the explicit purpose of the Constitution. And in that sense, it's an amazing contribution to humanity and the way that we choose to rule ourselves. On the other hand, we have the current state of affairs of America in 2022, where the federal government is massively, massively out of control. Now, I think there are a couple different ways to look at that. On one hand, you could say, well, see the Constitution failed. It wasn't as good of a document as you said it was, Dylan. Obviously, it didn't work. Look where it's gotten us, you're an idiot. On the other hand, or on the other perspective on that, which is the perspective that I would choose, I would say, listen, the Constitution at the end of the day, it's some ink on some paper. And that's our guiding document. And if we don't do what the words say, well, that doesn't mean you can't blame the document about that, right? We, as a people collectively, have chosen to disregard the Constitution and just do whatever we want. And when we no longer live by the rules that we set for ourselves, we shouldn't be surprised when we end up in no man's land. The Constitution and the rule of law in general don't really seem to apply too much in America anymore, which is a very sad state of affairs and we can lament that anytime. However, dealing with reality and where things are at, I think we need to realize that nobody really values the Constitution in the federal government. Whether you vote in a Republican or a Democrat or whatever, at the end of the day, some deep state bureaucrat is the one doing the day-to-day governing and they sure as shit don't care about the Constitution. So we have two options of where we can go from here. One is we could do some work to restore abiding obedience, maybe would be the best word in the Constitution. That is a possibility, that's a severe uphill battle, but there are organizations out there working to do that, like the Patriot Academy, for instance, which does a great job trying to educate people about what the Constitution is, what it says, what it means, how we should therefore live. They do a fantastic job working on that. The other thing you need to understand is that you currently live in a dying empire. I've read enough history that I understand when empires are at their end and we are currently living in a dying empire where there's this brackish confusion where some people want to still cling to the old ways and clutch their pearls with will what the Constitution says and there are some people who of course have completely left that behind and sneer at you for your old fashioned ideas and you live in this brackish middle ground where some rules and laws still apply to certain people depending on who you are and some rules don't and there's a weird battleground before things kind of fall apart completely and we enter a more of a Mad Max type scenario. So this Constitution Day, I choose to hold two things at the same time. On one hand, I want to be really thankful for the fact that we have the United States Constitution that I get to and got to live in a country that was based on the idea of preserving the rights and liberties of the people and restricting the federal government. Even if that hasn't worked out so well in practice, I still am thankful that we have this contribution to humanity in government where we have ideas and beliefs of the rights of people. That's very, very important going forward. On the other hand, I want to live in the practical world and realize that things are extremely out of whack and extremely screwed up and there's gonna come a day very shortly within my lifetime where the empire is gonna completely crumble into a Mad Max type situation or whatever and I wanna be prepared for that and plan for that and know that things probably aren't gonna go very well for the rest of my life and I wanna hold both of those things in tandem. One in hope that once again, possibly we could live in a land of liberty and the other hand knowing that if that is gonna happen in any event, we're gonna have to go through a very long, very dark tunnel in order to get there and I wanna be prepared and hopeful that one day, together, we can reach that light at the end of the tunnel. Do brave deeds and endure.