Title: Ready America One: the Constitutional Easter Egg
Original CoS Document (slug): ready-america-one
Login Required to view? No
Created: 2019-04-02 11:40:42
Updated: 2019-04-23 23:00:06
Published: 2019-04-02 03:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T21:02:53.557903544
I recently watched Ready Player One, a bit skeptical that it would be a movie I could enjoy. My husband is the gamer in our family, though I do geek out on rare occasions with him.
I hadn’t heard much about the movie, other than the basic reviews and a word-of-mouth recommendation. A bit trepidatious, I sat down with my excited spouse for an at-home date night and dove in.
I actually liked it immensely, and I was struck by two huge points.
The first striking realization was that the whole movie was basically a massive Easter egg.
No, not the chocolate ones supposedly pooped out every year by a magical rabbit on a holiday celebrating Resurrection, nor the plastic ones we parents fill with tooth-rotting treats in quantities we wouldn’t give our kids any other time of the year.
I’m talking about those fun little surprises we eagerly search for in easily overlooked places in games or movies. The random spot on a computer game where you walk up and down three times and suddenly a hidden cave full of treasure appears, or that spot on a DVD menu that you click to discover extra material.
It’s those little added bits that bring the movie or game to a whole new level. To find a movie like Ready Player One was as exciting as finding that one plastic egg with a gold dollar in it, out of dozens.
It’s that part of the bigger whole that makes you feel like you have an advantage over every other player in the game–one bonus above the average Easter egg hunter and a little more insight than the average movie watcher.
The Constitution's Easter Egg
Did you know the Constitution has an Easter Egg?
I know that sounds a little crazy, but it’s true. It’s a little gold dollar amidst all the standard candy bars and jelly beans. It’s that hidden treasure cave with a complete set of level 70 rare armor. It’s the hidden extra material with a couple of important deleted scenes that make the movie that much better.
Article V gives the power back to the people. Not just one person at the top, or a select few court judges, or the power-hungry members of a Congress that used to represent us.
Us. The people. The ones for whom the Constitution was written.
At one time in our nation’s history, the Constitution wasn’t a surprise. In high school, I memorized the whole thing, amendments included. I was a bit of an overachiever, so I don’t hold everyone in my generation to that standard.
However, the generations before mine knew their Constitution well enough to fight and die for the liberty it granted us. They understood, like George Washington, that,
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.
The government was and is a necessary human institution, but it is not for any reason to be treated like a dear friend, nor like our worst enemy. We are meant to handle it with cautious respect and never allow it to steal our God-given rights.
The Constitution is what grants the people the right to watch its governing bodies like hawks and call them to account when they grasp for power that is not theirs for the taking.
We no longer seem to understand that. Our youth do not recognize the Constitution as a viable, necessary document based on life-giving Judeo-Christian values and principles. They believe the Founders to be archaic, old white men bent on preserving the toxic, racist, misogynistic patriarchy.
America itself is seen as an embarrassment and not a beacon of light to the world. The youth rage against a “dying democracy” shouting in anger about climate change, free degrees and healthcare, and entitlement programs to “fix” our nation’s woes.
All the while, the fix we seek is within our grasp if we'd only look a little deeper.
Wade Watts (the main character in Ready Player One) knew this. He studied the game creator’s life and knew it backward and forward. He found those hidden Easter eggs within the millions of information bytes in the Halliday Journals.
However, it was only after he stopped going it alone that he could put the pieces together to find the truth behind Halliday’s giant Easter egg and the truth about himself.
We have more power than we realize.
In America, we are distracted by so many things that keep us from finding the Easter egg. What’s more, we’ve so fractured ourselves into party lines, identity politics, tribal groups, and victimhood that we have weakened our ability to even see what’s right in front of us.
If we would only seek out that hidden Easter egg buried within the Constitution’s hallowed pages, what a priceless reward we would find. Article V gives the power back to the People. It's the ultimate Easter egg and we cannot miss it.
If we band together to bring truth back to the forefront and not keep it hidden within a document we’ve archived as long-ago history, we can and will make lasting change.
We will become a nation once more known as a Beacon of Light to the world.