Celebration of Liberty

     The Constitution of the United States of America is the ultimate source of guidance and protection of freedom for our country. It is the founding document of our country’s federal government. It establishes the regulations and powers of the governing bodies, as well as defining the branches of government. This document explains the specific powers of the government and reveals the checks each branch has on the others. Aside from listing powers of the government it also allows states to retain certain rights and powers known as reserved powers. It is the supreme law of the land. However, it is also much more than this. As stated by Abraham Lincoln, we can not “interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.” This document outlining our system and basis of government, as well as a defender of individual rights, must be maintained and protected, and we the people must do our part to shield the Constitution. Whenever public strife arises, the government turns to this document for help and insight. It allows for interpretation, whether good or bad, establishing just execution of the law. The Constitution should not and will not be manipulated by our government to take away the very rights and liberties of the citizens that the framers of this country toiled so long and hard to establish as long as it is in the hands of wise and just leaders.

     Would we allow for this work of our ancestors to go to waste or be destroyed without a backward glance? For this reason we must do all we can as citizens to protect and promote the Constitution. As we progress we must carry on what our forbearers have established and begun. We must continually fight to maintain our liberties and freedom as did our forefathers. During his time, Samuel Adams noticed the possible threat of the destruction of the foundation of our country and knew that it would continue on into our day. For this reason he stated, “The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.” Although it may be hard to maintain and fight for, because of our ever-diversifying nation, we must continue to protect the Constitution. The men and women who have died, and are still dying, fighting for our country, have done so to protect their posterity and the independence and freedom of this country. We must not allow this to go for naught. It may seem that the battle for independence and liberty is over, and although the physical, militarized one may so be, the battle nonetheless continues to rage on. We continue to fight to this day in defense of our Constitution and freedoms. We must maintain the promises in the Constitution and continue to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
      Our rights are constantly being threatened and our freedoms are always at stake. Should the people fail to maintain the Constitution, our country as we know it would fall to destruction. Order and control would be lost and chaos and anarchy would arise. As Patrick Henry stated, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Liberties can be stolen and rights abolished, as the government attempts to find more control and power than is granted in the Constitution. As it is the only source of true protection and liberty, we must do our all to protect the Constitution and what the framers meant for it to accomplish.

     In the development of the Constitution, the framers intended for the people to be the sole protectors and security of it. The reason for this, I believe, is that as a nation that is headed by a democratic form of government with popular sovereignty as one of the principles of the Constitution, the people are the power behind the government. Although the constitution gives outlines as to what the government can or cannot do, the people ultimately hold the power to decide. A newspaper writer, Tenche Coxe, said in 1788, “[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” He may have been specifically talking about the right to bear arms; however, this can also be applied to the Constitution as a whole. The power of the government is and must continue to be derived from the people. Without the support of the people, the government has no power. The defense of the Constitution is critical to the furtherance of our nation and the progression of our liberty and prosperity. Benjamin Franklin attested to this in saying, “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” If Franklin could see the uncertainty of permanence of things in his time, especially of something with such great importance to his country, how much more vital is it now that we do the most we can to defend and protect our country and the document that so greatly protects and supports it? This is evident with the mores of our time manipulating that which was once evil and embracing it as good, and turning virtue into something undesirable.

     For these reasons, we, the people of the United States of America must continue to fight to maintain our rights by protecting and guarding the Constitution. Just as those who served in the past, we must continue to secure the Constitution and its purposes, take a stand and defend ourselves, our posterity, and the sacrifice of those who went before. Just as George Washington declared, “The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon,” so must we “never…abandon” this, our beloved Constitution of the United Stated of America.