The Long Clasp (Post 3)

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The Aspiration

Between the first and last phrases of the Constitution’s mission statement—its Preamble—are the following six phrases, which, in fact, list the long-range goals, the desired outcomes that lay behind the system of governance set out within the document:

• in order to form a more perfect Union,
• establish Justice,
• insure domestic Tranquillity,
• provide for the common Defense,
• promote the general Welfare,
• and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

            The first acknowledges the precipitating fact that the United States under the Articles of Confederation had proven distinctly unable to act with unity.  The last explicitly identifies the intended beneficiaries to the Blessings of Liberty to be “ourselves”—We the People—“and our Posterity”.  No reasonable reading of the entire paragraph can fail to understand that the People and their Posterity were intended as beneficiaries to it all.
            Once again, by no other authority than they themselves, they asserted the right to come together to choose this form of government in order to achieve these benefits to themselves and their Posterity.  And once again, as for one of the People so for every one.  These words express a very high aspiration for a way of life, a unified aspiration to equal claim by all to Justice, Tranquillity, Defense, Welfare, and the Blessings of Liberty.  High aspiration has always stood as the central scaffolding of US Greatness.  And to be clear, “high” aspiration refers to high standards of morality, conceived as fellow-fairness, the Golden Rule, the 2^nd Commandment of Jesus.
            Integral to this aspiration is acknowledgement that, after due deliberation and decision, the course of policy determined on by the majority will be accepted by all—but with these two caveats: that it be not adverse to the equal political rights of other citizens; and that the privilege be reserved to on-going disagreement and debate.  The fundamental proposition of this Great Idea, this Great Document, this Great Country, is that We-the-People, as citizens, rule ourselves.  Not as subjects shall we be ruled by monarch or tyrant or class of governors.  Our allegiance is to each other and to the rules and institutions We establish. We elect representatives to carry on the business of governance on our behalf, but they are meant to be answerable to us.
            The Framers of the Constitution fully understood the dangers that threatened this aspira- tion.  We know this from what they wrote about it, most concentratedly in the Federalists Papers, meant to educate the people of the risks and benefits of accepting or rejecting the proposed Constitution.  There they spelled out the histories of governments past, including failed democracies; the weaknesses as well as strengths of their proposal; and the mechanisms they adopted to eliminate or fortify the weaknesses.  Long before Walt Kelly and his alter-ego sage, Pogo, the Framers reported that they had “met the enemy, and he is us.”