On Jan. 20, 2009, the president-elect will take an oath to preserve, to protect and to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Contained therein are many articles, detailing the workings of Congress, the duties of the president and a rather thin description of the federal Judiciary. The primary function of these articles is to direct and to restrict the actions of elected officials. But the greatest calling, perhaps, of the Constitution is in its preamble. This preamble enumerates those values that set the United States apart from every other nation on earth at the time the Constitution was framed.
The preamble tells, as Schoolhouse Rock explains to us, "what those Founding Fathers set out to do." Most Americans, whose ancestors immigrated to this country from all over the world, have little in common with our founders other than goals for the nation. But the same ardor to achieve these goals is necessary to uphold the spirit of the nation created generations ago by the forefathers from whom we are separated by time, technology and twists of fate. Indeed, the preamble is the article of the Constitution that says what all Americans — not just the president — must do not only to be good citizens but to continue the American tradition.
We form a more perfect Union. We root out corruption. We discover greed within our government. We try to harmonize differences among those states of the Union with differing opinions. More than that, we have to get past the biases and prejudices of the founders, which may have prevented them from doing what was truly necessary to perfect the Union without fear, to change it without an inclination to preserve tradition for tradition's sake. We establish justice. We ensure not only that everybody has an equal right to take our government or fellow citizens to court but that those accused also have the right to stand up for themselves. We ensure domestic tranquility. We respect individual and group differences without resorting to violence. We come to understand each other as people, so that we might never wage racial or class warfare. We provide for the common defense. We decide how best to combine diplomacy and military defense. We promote the general welfare. We take steps to preserve those elements of our infrastructure that make it possible for us to prosper materially, and we encourage entrepreneurship while still caring for those in our society who are unable to care for themselves.
We secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity. We vote. We elect our leaders, just as those who came before us did. Who were they? They were the men who elected the first Congress. They were the nineteenth-century citizens who fought to remove property qualifications, poll taxes and literacy tests as a requirement for voter eligibility. They were newly emancipated blacks who cast ballots for a short time in the South. They were women who agitated for suffrage. They were civil rights activists in the 1960s who fought for the death of Jim Crow and the restoration of the constitutional rights of all Americans. They were the ballot counters in Florida in 2000.
And who is preserving our liberty today? They are the minimum-wage employees who work an hour later on Monday in order to vote on Tuesday. They are the soldiers who cast absentee ballots from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are immigrants, newly minted Americans, proudly voting in their first election. They are the soccer moms and dads on the sidelines discussing last night's election coverage. They are the Democrats of Idaho and the Republicans of Massachusetts who cast ballots, knowing that their candidate of choice will likely not win.
Who will preserve our liberty in the future? They will be the teens who skip primetime television in order to inform themselves by watching a debate. They will be Students for Obama and Students for McCain. They will be the Tufts Republicans. They will be the Tufts Democrats. They will be you and me. As registration deadlines approach, many of us look forward to voting in the first elections for which we will be eligible. But we would not be doing so were it not for the generations which have secured these blessings of liberty for us. Our posterity will no longer enjoy these blessings if we do not deliver on the great promise of this generation to engage itself in our republic. This is why we vote in states navy blue and burgundy red.
Thank your parents. Thank your grandparents. And thank all those who have come before you that have seen fit to do this. Your children will thank you too.
--
John Kaytrosh is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
