We the People

Growing up in America in the ‘70s and ‘80s I learned all about history, politics, grammar, science and math from Schoolhouse Rock! The tunes are catchy and I find myself, to this day, singing bits of them. Out of nowhere, while washing dishes, I might burst out with, ‘He was a hairy bear. He was a scary bear. We beat a hasty retreat from his lair and described him with adjectives.’

The one song that particularly stuck with me is the Preamble to the Constitution. This was quite a blessing my sophomore year in college. My American History professor gave 20 bonus points on the final exam for correctly writing out the Preamble. All these many years with the words rattling around in my head I’ve never thought about what they actually mean until this morning.

In the shower this morning I was singing the Preamble. When I got out my stepson asked me what the song was. I guess I was singing louder than I thought. I told him about Schoolhouse Rock! Sang a bit of Conjunction Junction and that was enough of an explanation for a 16 year old. I, however, pondered for the first time what I was actually singing.

The Preamble is an outline of what the founding fathers wanted to accomplish by giving us a Constitution. The preamble is actually one sentence with an ellipsis:

We the people of the United States of America… do ordain and establish this
Constitution.

There are six points in the ‘…’ that the founding fathers wanted to gift ‘to
ourselves and our prosperity.’ I can’t help but think that we have failed our
founding fathers.

The images that those six point conjure in my mind:

We the people of the United States of America…
In order to form a more perfect union

Establish justice

Ensure domestic tranquility

Provide for the common defense

Promote the general welfare

And ensure the blessings of liberty