By the People

I originally began this post describing the first of the eighteen enumerated powers granted to Congress by the U.S. Constitution. After composing a few paragraphs I deleted the text. The reason I did that is because anyone is able to read the entire Constitution and come away with a pretty clear understanding of the document. Now, semantics always come into play and I'll address those issues when they arise. However, simply going through the eighteen powers like I did with the Preamble won't serve much of a purpose as you can glean most anything I can from the written lines by reading them yourself.

While I feel it was important to break down the Preamble like I did in my first post, that's not a direction I want to consistently take. There are many people out there who will say "Well, you didn't go to Harvard or Yale, you don't have a law degree, you didn't sit next to me in class and study under "Blah, blah" Law professor, so you can't possibly grasp what the Founders had in mind." This is not true. While many signatures at the bottom of that parchment were lawyers, the Constitution, like I mentioned in my last post, was a document by the People. It wasn't scrawled in the legalese, written-to-confuse language that our present Congress so loves to use. 4,500 words. That's our Constitution (about 7,000 once all 27 amendments are added). It was written on 4 sheets that measure about 28"x23" each (If written on paper sized 9.5"x11," there'd be fewer than 12 pages). Today's healthcare law? Over 2,000 pages. Interesting that it takes 2,000 pages to create a single law, but only 12 to design an entirely new republic. Nancy Pelosi famously said "We have to pass the healthcare bill so you can find out what's in it." Is that what Benjamin Franklin said before he signed the Constitution?

Today we are so far removed from a government "by the People" that even many ordinary citizens believe you must have formal training to go through our founding document and understand it. In fact, it wasn't until the early 1900's that law students started studying case law instead of Constitutional law. Before that time people would actually discuss the Constitution in their daily lives. When is the last time you sat down with anyone and actually conversed about those four sheets of parchment that makeup our government? Very, very slowly, the Constitution has moved from a common, everyday document that citizens knew inside-and-out into a highly academic, even abstract article that seems to have little affect on us anymore. That's not how it is supposed to be. You want to read the Constitution? Then do. It takes about 30 minutes, amendments and all. When reading, don't be surprised if a few lines standout from the rest and you think "That's what they're using to justify (insert law here)?!" I'm sure there will be situations in the future where I'll recap different sections and articles of the Constitution in order to better understand the point I'm trying to make at that time, but that won't be common practice. Anyone with internet access or a library card can find the document that begins with "We the People..." read it, and understand it. It doesn't take a scholar, it just takes a small bit of time and the desire go through it. So that's why the hand-holding ends with my first post and going forward, I'll do what I set out to do: show where our government by the People has trampled over the limits of The Eighteen.

The Preamble

"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."

If you just skipped over that, try going back and reading it again. "We the People..." has become a tagline, a catchphrase, a marketing slogan. We learned it in school but didn't understand its value at the time and many of us still don't today. Now when we come across those three famous words scrawled across a poster, flier or even textbook, we look past them instead of at them. So, with my inaugural post on The Eighteen, let's actually look at those words, break them down, and try to understand what our Founders meant when they wrote them.

"We the People of the United States"

You'll notice the Preamble didn't start with "I, George Washington" or "I, Sam Adams," or even "We, the Founders." No, instead they chose "We the People." This was something never before done: the People would design, create and maintain a government where their voices could be represented and heard. While the Founders were great men, they placed no more significance on themselves than the rest of their fellow Americans, but included themselves in the masses with the words "We the People."

"...in order to form a more perfect Union"

This line serves to inform of the Founders' reasoning behind creating the Constitution. The word "form" is important because the Founders weren't adapting a previously-used article, or recycling an old idea, but creating--rather, forming--an entirely new and experimental type of government, an entirely new and experimental type of Union. The word Union signifies that though each state is separately sovereign in it's own right, all states are brought together to form a Union of States: The United States of America.

"...establish Justice,"

As John Adams said: "We are a nation of laws and not of men," the Founders put in place a government that would treat all men equally under the law. Under the Constitution, it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, young or old, black or white (more on that in a future post), but if laws are broken, punishment is distributed equally regardless of connections, class, Creed or stripe.

"...insure domestic Tranquility,"

This means to keep peace within our borders.

"...provide for the common defence,"

And to keep Americans within those borders safe from all enemies, foreign or domestic.

"...promote the general Welfare,"

The word "promote" is very important here and needs to be recognized as different from the word "provide." Promote's definition is "to contribute to the progress or growth of; further," while provide means "to furnish; supply." See the difference? The Second Amendment describes the "right to keep and bear arms," but nowhere does it say the government will provide said arms. Remember the saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime?" Of course you do because it's one of the most overused and self-righteous lines ever spoken. But using that quote we can show how promoting a man's ability to fish is different than providing fish to him. The Government can protect the man's right to fish by keeping within their eighteen powers, but this does not include providing him with a worms, a hook or a fishing pole.

"...and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,"

We each feel the need to both protect our families and provide for our children (a generalization, to be sure, but one I believe holds true for the majority of Americans). The Founders called Liberty a "Blessing" because up until this point they had no experience with what most of us take for granted today. It's the difference between working hard to become wealthy and being born into it. As the Founders had come from a tyrannical government, securing this newfound Liberty meant to not only ensure that they themselves would reap its' fruit, but that their children, and ours, might as well.

"...do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

And there you have it, the Preamble to our founding document, the United States Constitution. The Constitution itself is about 7,000 words long and is the framework for our entire government. It's the oldest written constitution still in use today. While it could be argued that we've strayed very far from our Founding Fathers' original intent, 223 years ago, our Constitution began to take shape with the words "We the People..."

After reading that breakdown, hopefully you've come away with a thing or two you didn't know, or maybe you've just unearthed an idea you hadn't considered before. The reason for this first blog post, moreover, the idea behind this blog, is that it's important to realize the above grants no power to the Federal Government. When a person authors a book they usually write an introduction. Once the introduction is read can the rest of the book be skipped and still convey the meaning of the entire text? The answer of course, is no.The Preamble was just that, an introduction, to what the Founders would continue to lay out with the enumerated powers in the Constitution. There are eighteen of them and each was designed to restrict the power of the government so as to not trample the rights of the people from whom its power is derived. The Eighteen.