I can imagine our Republic’s founders being quite pleased when they completed and agreed upon the Preamble to our Constitution.
Its aspirational words envisioned not only a renewed nation, but a new kind of nation. This was to be a nation centered upon its people, and focused on that which benefited and served those people as a single nation.
We the people, the document begins. These words, and the words that follow this opening statement, are the peoples’ words. They are words through which the people ordain and establish a Constitution to guide their lives together.
I trust the drafters of the Constitution trembled at what they were claiming for themselves—that the words they were approving represented the people’s will, and not just their own. If they felt no fear at that moment, they should have.
And what were to be the fundamental norms and qualities of this nation’s life for these people, for this people? Here are their six descriptors of them:
1) First, this nation was beginning an ongoing, never-ending, journey toward forming an ever more perfect Union. The opening words did not claim that they in themselves, either at their moment of conception or throughout whatever life they would have validity, would create a perfect Union, because, the founders surely knew, human perfection is always beyond human reach. More perfect is a moving target; you have to get ahead of it to meet it. This was to be a nation always focused on the future and its possibilities
And it is always to be a Union…a one, a singular…made out of many. A thing by itself—consisting only of its own kind or substance—is not a union, because it doesn’t have to be. Union requires the combining of different kinds or substances, in this case, I suppose primarily, the States of the Union, but also the varieties of peoples and ethnicities and heritages that called those States their homes. The Preamble obviously envisions a union, not a disunion; a union always moving toward perfection—never there but nevertheless, always a union.
I suspect the founders would be dismayed by the politics of disunion for the sake of politics that prevails in our Republic two and half centuries later.
There’s a dark underbelly, of course, to their talk of Union: the Union envisioned at that moment excluded a lot of people who lived here, particularly the half of the population that was female, and the large percentage of the population that was not white. At best, women were second-class citizens; at worst Blacks and Native Americans were not citizens at all. Only with great struggle and sacrifice have they walked out of that dark into the light of full citizenship, each step forming a more perfect Union than the one just before it.
The Union would become more perfect as five more goals that follow this first one were embodied in the life of the nation.
2) Justice would be established not only in court rooms, but in the daily communal life of the people. The establishment of justice requires the careful balancing of the wants and needs of some and the wants and needs of others. When any individual or group of individuals achieves and maintains social, economic, or political power that controls the lives of others, there is injustice, and the people of this Union want that injustice righted and justice between peoples established.
3) Domestic tranquility would be assured, not by the power kings and dictators assume for themselves, but by the respect of the people for one another and for the system of government and laws this Constitution ordains and establishes. Individuals and groups of individuals who threaten or destroy domestic tranquility threaten to destroy the Constitution itself.
A tension necessarily arises here: what if someone or some group seeking justice for themself threatens, or shatters, domestic tranquility? Too simply put: the nation takes a step back and explores what needs to be done to resolve the issue in a way that will create a more more perfect Union, a union without the fracture of that particular injustice.
4) The common defense would be provided for to assure our security from hostile invaders, foreign and domestic. To defend not just our land and our people. but the very ongoing ideals of our life together as envisioned in this preamble. The common defense defends us all together, not some part of us against some other part of us.
5) The general welfare would be promoted—the goal that there is a level of good that is good for every person in an increasingly perfect Union of all the parts of the nation. This Constitution is not to be understood and applied in ways that increase the welfare/wellbeing of some at the expense of others. The general welfare, like the general store, offers to meet every basic need, and a few extras as well.
6) And finally, the Blessings of Liberty would be secured not only for us but also for our Posterity, for those who come after us, after we the people. The six characteristics of the new nation that began by looking ahead to a more perfect Union conclude by looking ahead at Liberty for generations to come.
The articles and amendments that follow the aspirational words of the Preamble are, or intend to be, practical and down-to-earth guideposts toward turning the aspirations of the people into practical, livable reality. They are, in fact, implementing directions, answerable to the Preamble and its vision. However and whenever they are implemented, called upon, invoked, or interpreted, they are subject to the kind of nation the Preamble envisions.
To pull any one or collection of articles and amendments away from the preamble—as is done by many with the Second amendment—and understand it as if it is only about itself and its concerns is to cut it off from its air supply and threaten the living organism the Constitution’s drafters intended to establish.
Today’s striking down of Roe v. Wade advances none of the preamble’s envisioned characteristics of this nation. It is a giant step backwards. It threatens the full “blessings of liberty” for my young granddaughters. God forbid they ever become pregnant against their will.
In the name of “the unborn,” it threatens the respect for the Constitution itself that is necessary if it is to continue to guide our life together. I doubt the creators of the Constitution had any notion that one day, the “yet to be born” would exercise absolute power over the lives and fortunes of those who are here already.
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