COMMENTARY FROM jeffmoskin

[thelivyjr]

More like we're moving farther and farther away from it, trying very hard to make it as imperfect as possible ...

[jeffmoskin]

So it would appear.

[thelivyjr]

I think you are one of the only people in the whole of America who knows those words even exist, or were supposed to mean something to us all ...

[jeffmoskin]

They go even further:
"...to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

We have done little for these, especially the general welfare, and including the elimination of the Liberty of a woman to decide whether or not to bear a child.

A true race to the bottom.

[thelivyjr]

What more can I say other than to say there is nothing more to add to that last line, which says it all ...

[thelivyjr]

They go even further:

"...to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

You might be the only person in all of America who still thinks the US Constitution actually means something or stands for something when all it is is a worthless rag not even fit to be used as toilet paper ...

[jeffmoskin]

See what the so-called "originalists" have to say about it.

[thelivyjr]

Probably nothing, and when have you ever heard Joe Biden use the word "constitution" as he quoted from it chapter and verse and that answer is never ...

[thelivyjr]

The National Constitution Center

The Preamble

by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law School; Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California – Berkley Law School; Michael Stokes Paulsen, Distinguished University Chair and Professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law

The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution — the document’s famous first fifty-two words — introduces everything that is to follow in the Constitution’s seven articles and twenty-seven amendments.

It proclaims who is adopting this Constitution: “We the People of the United States.”

It describes why it is being adopted — the purposes behind the enactment of America’s charter of government.

And it describes what is being adopted: “this Constitution” — a single authoritative written text to serve as fundamental law of the land.

Written constitutionalism was a distinctively American innovation, and one that the framing generation considered the new nation’s greatest contribution to the science of government.

The word “preamble,” while accurate, does not quite capture the full importance of this provision.

“Preamble” might be taken — we think wrongly — to imply that these words are merely an opening rhetorical flourish or frill without meaningful effect.

To be sure, “preamble” usefully conveys the idea that this provision does not itself confer or delineate powers of government or rights of citizens.

Those are set forth in the substantive articles and amendments that follow in the main body of the Constitution’s text.

It was well understood at the time of enactment that preambles in legal documents were not themselves substantive provisions and thus should not be read to contradict, expand, or contract the document’s substantive terms.

But that does not mean the Constitution’s Preamble lacks its own legal force.

Quite the contrary, it is the provision of the document that declares the enactment of the provisions that follow.

Indeed, the Preamble has sometimes been termed the “Enacting Clause” of the Constitution, in that it declares the fact of adoption of the Constitution (once sufficient states had ratified it): “We the People of the United States . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Importantly, the Preamble declares who is enacting this Constitution — the people of “the United States.”

The document is the collective enactment of all U.S. citizens.

The Constitution is “owned” (so to speak) by the people, not by the government or any branch thereof.

We the People are the stewards of the U.S. Constitution and remain ultimately responsible for its continued existence and its faithful interpretation.

“We the People of the United States” strongly supports the idea that the Constitution is one for a unified nation, rather than a treaty of separate sovereign states.

The idea of nationhood is then confirmed by the first reason recited in the Preamble for adopting the new Constitution — “to form a more perfect Union.”

The other purposes for adopting the Constitution, recited by the Preamble — to “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” — embody the aspirations that We the People have for our Constitution, and that were expected to flow from the substantive provisions that follow.

The stated goal is to create a government that will meet the needs of the people.

Finally, the Preamble declares that what the people have ordained and established is “this Constitution” — referring, obviously enough, to the written document that the Preamble introduces.

That language is repeated in the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, which declares that “this Constitution” shall be the supreme law for the entire nation.

THAT, jeffmoskin, is what I, a common American citizen, know about the Preamble to the Constitution that you cite above, so why doesn't the high and mighty Joe Biden know the same as a commoner in this nation knows?

[jeffmoskin]

I m quite certain that Joe Biden knows full well the meaning of that preamble. It is the Repubs and MAGA folks (same thing perhaps) that are busy REMOVING Freedoms (for women) and limiting the general welfare (unless you are a billionaire). We were making pretty good progress, especially with LBJ (with one not-so-small exception), until Ray-Gun came on the scene with Mourning for America.

I have been mourning ever since.