From Forum News Service
A recent editorials from a Midwest newspaper.
Salute your Constitution
Our Founding Fathers - 39 of them - signed a document that made freedom a reality.
You could argue that Constitution Day, Sept. 17, is the true birthday of the United States of America. Oh, Fourth of July gets all the fanfare. Fireworks, parades and picnics dot the land scape. It is a national holiday. Com munities across the country celebrate the adoption of the Decla ration of Independence - that document that declared the colonists free.
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But Independence Day is more accurately the date of intent. It took a revolution to make the break from Great Britain.
And it took the signing of the U.S Constitution on Sept. 14, 1787, to bring the Founding Fathers’ dream a reality.
They intended that the Constitution would ensure that the young nation would indeed be of, by and for the people. So this month two hundred and twenty-seven years ago, delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the final time and 39 men signed the dry, detailed language that outlines the powers invested in Congress, the president and the courts. The Constitution lays out the framework for state rights and rule, the U.S. Postal Service, taxes, military and more.
A free nation - what some call the “Great Experiment” - was born with this preamble and the seven articles that follow it:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The living document has changed through amendments and court rulings, but the framework remains core to what our nation is and must continually strive to become.
So happy birthday, America.
- Red Wing Republican Eagle
