It’s probably a dead giveaway of my age that anytime I begin to have a constitutional discussion, this song comes into my head. A lot of grammar is the same way, except for those citations by Dr. Bradshaw of specific rules from the standard writing text of our college. I was at the college, by the way, to study History and Political Science. Thus my reliance on School House Rock is that much more abominable. What’s worse, however, is that it seems as if we as a society may be forgetting even those things that were sung to us on Saturday mornings.
Or it could be that, like REM lyrics, some of those words just kind of run into one another. Words like “establish justice” and “secure domestic tranquility.” These are, according to our much vaunted constitution, the reasons why we constituted a government in the first place. These are the things that are right up front there in the preamble. Now, as long as we are having honesty hour here, I will admit that I often skip over the preamble to books I am reading. Yet another awful thing for a student of literature to say. Mostly I don’t read them because I don’t care why an author wrote a book. I just want to read the book. Most of the time, I would dare say that we don’t think about the preamble to the constitution because we don’t care to discuss why the government is being formed. We take it for granted that we agree on said purpose.
Clearly, however, we don’t agree on said purpose. Either that or we don’t recall what we agreed on. With all of the sound and fury generated in the last three years, my take is that we don’t agree, at least not anymore. The problem is that we keep talking about disagreements regarding the “how” of government. The mechanics of the “how” are contained in the 7 Articles and subsequent amendments. We need to get up into a discussion of the why. Is or is not “secur[ing] domestic tranquility” (for instance) one of the things we want government to do? If so, we need to get focused on giving the various manifestations of the government the tools they need to accomplish the job. And if we’d rather turn that job over to individual citizens, then I really am moving to Canada.
“insure” domestic tranquility
Huh. Yes, you are right (as you know.) Seems like Madison thought the domestic was tranquil and should be kept that way rather than it needing to be made tranquil. Lends credence to the interpretation of the Second amendment that sees gun ownership as an individual right.
(p.s. the government is made up of individual citizens.)
Of course, and for 213 years we have had agreed to a government constituted under the Constitution (we should get a catchier name for that.) My point is not that we as individual citizens can’t question the constitution, but that we are talking about the wrong things. Specifically, whether the responsibility of insuring domestic tranquillity is the responsibility of the government or of private individuals carrying concealed weapons. It’s not just about the second amendment.