Quotes from Christopher Collier

Understanding the Constitution is of critical importance for all Americans, for it is this brief document that protects our liberties and, by keeping our nation from falling into chaos, allows us to get on with our lives. Nothing matters so much as this.

For example, under the Articles of Confederation, the national government could not tax people directly, as we do today, but must ask for money from the states, which could raise it however they wanted.

However, it was best known to the delegates as stated by the French thinker Montesquieu. He pointed out that When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or the same body of magistry, there can be no liberty; because apprehension may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

by the 1790's an average American over fifteen years old drank just under six gallons of absolute alcohol each year. . . . The comparable modern average is less than 2.9 gallons per capita. We

In the eighteenth century it was generally believed that people needed to take in a certain amount of "spirits" every day for strength and energy: Washington, in planning one long forced march, ordered extra rations of rum for the troops as a matter of course.