Celebrate the Constitution

You can’t blame the decline in American patriotism over the past 50 years on any one thing or any one person — but you can look at individual people and individual agendas and see plainly that there are enemies of patriotism everywhere.

So what is American patriotism? It is love of country — not blind love, not fanatic love, not indiscriminate love — but, yes, passionate love. It is respect for the institutions and people that gave you the life you have today as an American. And it is being informed about the history and values of our country, and its significance in spreading and preserving liberty worldwide.

Yesterday, Sept. 17, was celebrated in our nation as Constitution Day. It is a holiday which all should hold dear who value the rule of law, yet few will even have heard of it.

The holiday commemorates that day on Sept. 17, 1787, when George Washington and 38 other members of the Constitutional Convention signed their names to the document that still is at the heart of our republic today.

I encourage everyone to take some time this weekend or this week to find a copy of the Constitution in your library, your bookstore or online. Sit down with it, study it, and be astounded by the power of its 5,000 or so words.

Its authors declared that they intended to “secure the blessings of liberty” not just to themselves, but also to us, “their posterity,” through the mechanisms and protections contained within this document. That’s pretty powerful stuff. Try to wrap your head around the magnitude of that gift.

Think of everything that had come before 1787, and before the American Revolution in 1776. Think about the divine right of kings, and the chattel state of women, and the ease with which one man could own another. That’s the way life worked before 1787. Nor did it change overnight. America was not a utopia where all wrongs were righted with the stroke of a pen. Slavery continued here for many years. Women were denied numerous rights straight up until the middle of the 20th century and beyond.

But look at where we are today — look at where the whole world is today — compared to the state of things in 1787, and you will see that our forefathers and their gift to us — the Constitution of the United States of America — made a change for the better. Not “for the perfect,” mind you, but for the better.

I’ve written about the decline of America in a recent series of columns, and asked “How did we get here?” In essence, my question could be answered rhetorically by simply saying that we turned our back on the greatest gift ever given by one generation of mankind to another.

And if you want to know, “How do we get out of here?” that answer is simple, too. Follow the Constitution and once again find a way to secure the blessings of liberty not just for yourselves, but for your posterity. You deserve it, and so do they.