Week 4 countdown - A New Birth of Freedom - our Preamble

 Dear Friends,
Today is 9/17/2025, and it is Constitution Day in honor of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on 9/17/1787.  The Constitution is a fitting subject for our 52 week "Rebirth of Freedom" project.  For week 4 of our effort, our goal is to memorize the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.  Here it is:

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.

Isn't this beautiful?  It is succinct.  What else do you really want from a government?  Here's my secret.  I remember a lot of things, but memorizing something word-for-word is hard for me.  So I will tell you what I have done to memorize the preamble.  I have noticed that it has six bullet points and I count with my fingers as I recite it to ensure I have six bullet points.  Here it is written with the bullet points enumerated:

We the People of the United States,
      (1) in Order to form a more perfect Union,
      (2) establish Justice,
      (3) insure domestic Tranquility,
      (4) provide for the common defense,
      (5) promote the general Welfare, and
      (6) secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I have a pocket Constitution handy and opened to the preamble.  I look at it after I recite the preamble to see if I got it right.  Did I jumble the order?  Did I get the words precisely correct?  This is a little work, but it is an important part of the Constitution.  

Take some time to think about each item on the list of six.

You might explore this website about Constitution:  https://www.constitutionday.com/

You might have heard this already.  We have the oldest written constitution in the world.  After the 3rd French Republic, I quit counting how many Constitutions France has had.  What is called the "British Constitution" is not a written document, but a collection of traditions that they call a constitution.  What our founding fathers did was unique and remains one-of-a-kind.  

We have a lot to be proud of.

This counts as week 4 in our 52 week countdown to July 4, 2026.  We will be doing two-a-week for a while to catch up, but they are not hard. Try to finish this by Saturday 9/20.

Thank you,
Robert