For Ourselves and Our Posterity

This past week was Constitution Day, a day when we in the teaching profession are called upon to teach something about the Constitution to our charges, to honor the anniversary of its signing. There's something quite inspiring about unpacking the meaning of the Preamble for third graders, and it's been on my mind ever since.

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

What does it mean? What are the values laid out as the foundation for this great experiment upon which the founders of our country were embarking with no certainty of how it would turn out? I can't help thinking about how much care must have gone into the choosing of every word.

1) A more perfect union: The best community we can be. Together. United.
2) Justice: Law and fairness.
3) Domestic tranquility: Peace at home.
4) The common defense: protection from dangers, a shared sense of safety.
5) The general welfare: health, happiness, and good things for everyone,
6) The blessings of liberty: all the best that freedom gives us, secured, made sure not just for us, here and now, but for our children and our children's children - for our future.

As we set out to understand it in third grade, we asked the questions that were, essentially, the questions of the founding fathers: What kind of community do we want to be? How can we get there?  So simple and so profound. I imagined this group of people laying out their vision with those same questions in their hearts, not knowing that over 220 years later, their words would carry such weight and meaning and history - not knowing, but perhaps hoping. Hoping. "For ourselves and our posterity."

Every generation since has endeavored, in their own way, through their own challenges and mis-steps, to live up to those ideals, stay true to that vision, and understand it and reinterpret it through the ever-changing lens of evolving customs and events, in the hope of safeguarding it for future generations. "For ourselves and our posterity."

The Declaration of Interdependence

Today in The Oregonian, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. referenced the final sentence in the Declaration of Independence:

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Dionne went on to talk about a new service-oriented project, but as I was reading his column, I was still thinking about that sentence and its broader implications for the way we treat one another in our country.  We have a tendency as a country, driven perhaps by our long-standing value of independence and individual initiative or perhaps simply by our capitalist foundations, to be selfish.  We focus on self-interest and individual gain.  We complain about taxes and the idea that our hard-earned money might go to some fellow citizen whom we deem undeserving.  We see our small businesses as models of the entrepreneurial spirit and we celebrate the myth of the self-made man and then when someone dares to point out that none of us are truly self-made, that most success at some point involves the help of others, and that basic shared services such as police, fire and infrastructure are in fact funded by those taxes we decry as evil, that person gets attacked.

And yet there, in one of the two greatest founding documents of our country, it says "We pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."  It is both a declaration of independence and, paradoxically, a declaration of interdependence.  It is saying that those who participate in the great experiment that is the United States of America do so with the understanding that they will help one another and rely upon one another, that their fates are bound up together.  That they are a community.

Are we living up to that promise?  Are we still willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to the ideals that all people are created equal and are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Are you willing to make such a promise in order to be a citizen of the United States of America?  To give your life, your money, your honor to support the rights of your fellow citizens, whoever they may be?

Happy July 4th, everyone.