We the People

September 17, 1787

Today is Constitution Day. It may be the most widely disregarded of US Holidays. It shouldn’t be. As we are seeing lately, freedom is an endangered thing, held by a thread, or three. One of those three is the Constitution.

When I write, as I did the other day, about the loss of freedom of speech in England, I thank God and Jemmy Madison for the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights. For here, right in one of the Charters of Freedom, is my right to speak, and yours too.

Back in 2012, I wrote about this, and here is part of what I said:

David B. Monier-Williams says:

September 17, 2012 at 3:25 pm

I’m glad you brought attention to this most important of days.

I was a very lucky person. During WWII my father was sent over from Britain to Washington D.C.on the British Raw Materials Mission…basically to get brass to make ammunition. My mother joined him. this was in early 1942. We three children,were in Canada, my mother’s native land, spent the Winter and Easter vacations from boarding school with them in D.C..

My father was paid in pounds which didn’t go very far in the US in those days. My mother, being very ingenious, planned twice weekly excursions to the various historic sites and museums. It was always planned with both my two older sisters in mind and myself, some stuff that interested boys and some girls. There were of course, some places that interested all of us.

One such trip was to the Capitol Building. In the Rotunda on display were the three most important documents of the world. There under protective glass were the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the one on which both of these are based the Magna Carta. It had been sent over from England together with many other historical artifacts for protection for the duration of the war. Sad to say I didn’t even have a “Brownie” to record this amazing day.

What an awesome sight that must have been in the Rotunda of the Capitol, which is pretty awesome in itself! Thank you, David.

Let’s talk about this comment a bit.

If you wish to know about individual freedom in this world, there are two countries who have pioneered it and presented the case in writing:. England and the United States. There are three documents existing that spell it all out. There are legends that there are other’s, for instance, there is what is called King Alfred’s Charter which supposedly was similar. But anyway, there are really only three documents that have changed the world, and they are all in English or Anglo-French.

The first of these is Magna Charta signed by King John at Runnymede, in 1215, as we have said it was based upon older charters including Henry I’s  Charter of Liberties. It was forced upon King John by the barons of England by force of arms, and like our Emancipation Proclamation did not really do anything in the present. But it has come down to all of us whose law code descend from the Common Law as the basic statement of the rights of the Freeman. At that time in history, it was the first and only attempt anywhere to limit the power of the King. That would make it the basic document of freedom for the entire world.

This particular copy is from 1297 and bears the Seal of Edward I, it is privately owned and is on permanent loan to the National Archives and is displayed in the same manner as the other ‘Documents of Freedom’. There are four copies of the original 1215 Charter, all are in England.

The other two documents David mentions seeing were the Declaration of Independence, perhaps the most succinct, concise, and thoroughgoing statement of rights of the individual ever written, and the Constitution of the United States of America, in which we codified how free men could best organize to govern themselves.

Now here’s some thinking matter for you, these three documents plus the Bill of Rights, have become the sine qua non of freedom for men everywhere, how remarkable that all of them are derived from the history of the English freeman and his tenacity in resisting the imposition of tyranny by his own government. Where are the similar document from Europe, or Asia or Africa?

Individual liberty is the bequest of the English speaking countries to the world. We have a lot to do to uphold our heritage.

Today, all around the world, in London, in Germany, in Poland, in Israel, in India, in Japan, in Australia, in fact, wherever free men, or men who wish to be free, gather, they will take heart from a simple document written long ago, that starts,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, 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, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That is the document that turned us from these semi-united squabbling states into The United States.

Brave words, but like Magna Charta, and the Declaration before them, only words on paper. The difference is that in America they were made good in patriots’ blood. And still are, every day.

Today would be an excellent day to take that little book out of your pocket (as so derisively said by a US Senator to Judge Kavanaugh during the hearing) and read again why America is different, and why it is free.