We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution is written in the voice of THE PEOPLE of the Unites States, NOT in the voice of a government. Yes, you are going to say that the people ARE the government, however it has to be established, first.
What is the purpose of this Constitution? To form a more perfect Union. The Articles of Confederation that was currently in effect would not be the best vehicle to drive this country forward, so the people had to have a better type of union.
It furthermore establishes several things. The need to establish some things means that those things were either NOT there, or again, they needed to be set straight in a better way:
Establish Justice: In other words, How Are We Going to prepare to Treat Each Other. The People made it very clear what they DID NOT like about the King of England’s treatment of them in the Declaration of Independence, so now, the people needed to set forth and publish how they were going to be treated.
Insure Domestic Tranquility: You need to know that when the founding fathers (yes, they were all men) wrote the 2 documents that are the subjects of this series, there were approximately 3 million people in this country and they considered themselves to be members of their own states before they were members of the country. They knew that they had to get together and calm all the differences between the states so that commerce could happen without having every state treating every other state like a foreign country!
Provide for the Common Defence: The people needed to be able to establish a system for defending our new country from other foreign countries. We will be discussing what needed to happen for this very common sense measure.
Promote the General Welfare: This was written and very hotly debated about what IS the General Welfare of the people who wrote this. Common usage of this phrase in the time that it was written would indicate that the General Welfare is that which has the broadest effect. In other words a law or statute that adversely affects one group of otherwise law-abiding citizens at the expense of another more narrowly defined group should not be allowed.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves: By establishing the rules for the Treatment of all the People, knowing that we are going to be prepared to fight, if necessary for our National Security and ensuring that all people are treated the same way, we will have the Liberty that we required for ourselves in the Declaration of Independence.
AND by so doing we have laid the ground for our Posterity (our kids and their kids and their kids…) to enjoy the same Liberties with the same responsibilities that we had.
…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I have been an America Lover for the past 55 years. There has been many that have taken the words that were very clearly written in the language of their origin and have stomped all over them. This includes many of our elected officials.
Please go to: http://www.squidoo.com/usa-constitution and leave a comment / take a poll about what this document means to you, the country and what we need to do to do our part in preserving it.
Article from articlesbase.com
