Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019, was the 232nd anniversary of the 1787 signing, by Constitutional Convention delegates in Philadelphia, of the U.S. Constitution. As Public Law 915 designated Sept. 17- 23 as Constitution Week, it is fitting this week to read and reflect on both the greatest document of human liberty in the history of mankind, and on our nation’s foundational principles set in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
In a speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge said: “Three very definite propositions were set out in its [the Declaration of Independence] preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed … No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction … are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
Those misinformed often state the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional structures of limited government are obsolete, set forth long ago for a horse-and-buggy age. “Look at the progress we’ve made since,” they exclaim. “Nobody follows that old Constitution anymore,” and they proceed to denigrate our Founding Fathers as evil slave holders and old white men. Yet scholars from many countries affirm that it was this first-ever ordained and established by “We the People” Constitution that unleashed the “inestimable blessings” of civil and religious liberty, and enfranchised and lifted from poverty more people than ever before or since.
