Those are the three most powerful words ever written.
"We the People"
That set the tone for the country we were destined to become.
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.
When the Constitution was being written, I'm sure there were many choices to begin the Preamble--"The Sovereign States", "The States of..." and so on. Yet they chose those three.
We. The. People.
Through the years, that has been the foundation for our government, the first to actually put on paper the notion that government comes from consent of the governed. Both friend and foe alike watched with interest as this "Great Experiment" in government developed.
To be sure, there had been other "popular governments" before, namely the Athenian Democracy and the Roman Republic, but they never lasted as stable and enduring monuments. Athens descended into war, oligarchy, and the eventual rule of Alexander. Rome rose into an Empire with one man ruling all.
But we have endured. Buoyed by those three words, We The People have indeed tried to keep true to the nature of our Government. We have had setbacks, but always WE have righted the ship. And we always will.
And how have we done this? In this age of Corporate Plutocracy, how have we maintained our power?
- The right to petition for redress of grievances.
- The rights to speak freely and to assemble.
- The right to VOTE.
EVERYTHING that happens happens because WE have voted. When confronted with the evil of slavery, We The People elected the men that wrote and ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments. When confronted with inequality towards women, We The People elected those that passed and ratified the 19th Amendment. We have it in out power to change the government every two years.
But we must be wise. Thomas Jefferson warned us of the dangers of ignorance:
"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity"
"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be....
If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free,
it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Abraham Lincoln too warned us of the dangers:
"As a nation of free men, we shall either live forever or die by suicide"
We came perilously close once. 600,000 American lives were lost as a result.
Lincoln would speak about the purposes of the Almighty. Dr. King would speak of the "Arc of Justice", and Gandhi would speak of the "court of conscience".
Whatever the belief, it has been the inexorable power of We The People that has (slowly) moved us always forward.
And so it shall be again. On this Independence Day, I take my hope in the words of Abraham Lincoln, who never lost hope in We The People to make the correct choices. For in a speech to commemorate those who died on this day in 1863, he laid out the premise of the United States of America in words that light the way to the future through the years:
"That this Nation shall have a new birth of Freedom, and that government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, and for the PEOPLE shall not perish from the earth".
Celebrate the Fourth of July, then back to work.
UPDATE This is a repost of a diary I wrote last night. If you all like it, I'll post it every year.