"Promote"

I want to expand on something my colleague Tom just posted on the preamble to the Constitution.

The Constitutional framers were nothing if not deliberate in the wording of that document. By all accounts they labored over each and every word, confident that this brash audacious document written by a group of misfit colonists half a world away would be pored over and dissected by every despot from Wales to Timbuktu, and one can assume they were serious about getting it right the first time. And so it is with absolute certainty that I assert that each and every word in that preamble is there for a reason.

Which means that if we take a step back and dissect the essense of those words, we can learn quite a bit about what the framers of our Consitution thought about the responsibilities and limits of governmental power. Because, as I fear we would learn under an Obama Presidency, just because Government CAN do something, doesn't mean it SHOULD do that thing.

So what exactly are they saying in that opening paragraph. Well for one thing, they were smart enough to know they were fallible, and that we down through the ages would be similary fallible, and so they left us with a reasonable standard for creating the laws by which we would live and be goverened.

They required only that we seek to create a union "more perfect"... which is to say not perfect at all. If we're going to write a law, or task Government with doing this or that thing, then we are foresworn by the preamble to our Consitution that the law or task must leave our union "more perfect" than it was before.

Our forefathers also left us a short list of five issues that they thought should be within the purview of this new Government they were creating for us. And they sort of ranked them for us too... no they did not list them in order of importance... rather they accompanied each task with a qualifying verb.

And what are those verbs? They are, in order, "Establish", "Provide", "Insure", "Promote", and "Secure."

Remember that regular feature they used to do on the old Sesame Street show... "One of these things is not like the other"? I'm reminded of that gag whenever I read the preamble to the Consitution. Words like "Establish", "Provide", "Insure", and "Secure" leave no doubt that the issues which accompany them MUST be done at all costs.

You have either "Established Justice" or you have not. You have either "Provided for the Common Defense" or you have not. It is impossible to sorta, kinda secure the blessings of Liberty. They are either Secure or they are not Secure. Pretty simple.

So... why's that wishy-washy word "promote" thrown in there? What's THAT all about. "Promote" the general welfare!? That's prety lame. Why not something like "Guarantee the general welfare" or "Certify the general welfare"? Why, in a document full of guarantees do we suddenly run up against this kind of limp-wristed, if we get around to it, verbiage?

I believe it's not an accident. I believe that the framers of the Constitution were making a crucial point... that certain things MUST be secured by Government in order for freedom and liberty to flourish. That without a guarantee from Government that certain things will be the responsibility of Government... things like the protection of property rights, the right to be safe in one's home from crime, the right to be defended against invasions by foreign enemies.... the whole damned experiment would fall apart.

Government can and SHOULD do those things in order that we, as individual Americans can continue to go out and pursue the one thing that we, and we alone, are responsible for... our own individual welfare. Government can promote it, but it cannot guarantee it. That's up to you, and me, and everyone else... INDIVIDUALLY. For if not, aren't we just wards of the state? Aren't we just unchained slaves?

I seriously doubt that those courageous men sailed thousands of miles across hostile oceans towards unknown futures, leaving relatively comfortable lives behind, only to embrace a slightly different kind of oppression than the one they were fleeing in the first place.

Don't you?