As a person who has spent considerable time in the classroom teaching civics to young people, I often find myself discouraged by the public discourse on the role of government in our American system. So many citizens and politicians spout the rhetoric that the role of government is only to “protect the rights of the individual”. At times I want to ask them: Did you fail to learn about the Constitution of our country when you were in school?
The Preamble of our nation’s Constitution clearly elaborates several purposes of government: “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.” We make a mistake when we demonize our government. We, the people, have established and support our government that is charged with doing the things that are listed in that Preamble. We contribute to that with our personal contributions such as taxes and civic participation. We may, individually, have differing values and opinions that we personally live according to, but these are the guiding principles for our union. The next time you hear someone say (or think to yourself) that our government is only there to protect a person’s individual rights, I ask you to reflect on the principles embodied in the Preamble and to consider that not only are the rights of all protected when the rights of an individual are protected, but that the reverse is also true: the rights of the individual are protected when we work together to provide the benefits of the Preamble for all of our people. That takes a government that can make rules and regulations, that is not beholden to any special interests, and that is striving to make our union better as we move forward.
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Time for Common Sense AgainCommon sense commmentary by Joel Kreger (unless noted and credited to a guest writer) Archives
November 2018
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