Preamble Commentary

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,[1] 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.

The preamble to the US Constitution is not very detailed in its scope. It lays some of the groundwork for the spirit of the United States of America. It hasn't provided much guidance in the courts, which is symbolic of a larger problem really: the courts have often time pronounced their own laws which they have 'found' in the Constitution.

The emphasis on "the People" was probably intended to distinguish from having a monarch. It could also be distinguished from "We, the Government".

To this extent I find it meaningful that the people of the United States are the ones who form the Union. It is not the Union -or government- that makes people or gives them a meaningful existence.

The Constitution was written hundreds of years before people watched 24 hour cable and talked like buffoons about how rights from government were supposed to somehow give them a meaningful life.

The great founding fathers were given few rights from the British government, and yet they were able to do much with their lives before there was anything like a Bill of Rights. All this is to say the government exists for the people and the people do not exist for the government, whatever John F. Kennedy might have said about that.

The preamble clarifies to its readers five things the Union ought to provide to it's people, and they are:

1) Established Justice

This is not "social justice" or "redistributive justice" or assurances that the average minority or alternative lifestyle makes the same average salary of everyone else. Established Justice means when someone robs you, the government has a responsibility to intervene and return your property. We live in a day where the government is continually looked upon as a vehicle to redistribute property -making the government the robber instead of the provider of Justice.

2) Domestic Tranquility

Domestic tranquility is opposed to international tranquility. The founding fathers did not expect us to intervene in every place around the world that seemed instable. In my opinion Communism presented a direct freedom to American-style Liberty (aka the best liberty afforded by any nation). These days we are constantly wishing to intervene in nations around the world, and the UN is constantly requiring funds from us to throw at conflicts around the world.

3) Provisions for the Common Defense

The Constitution explicitly recognizes the need to spend government funds on military spending. The military has gone out of fashion with the media elites of our day. In some countries, such as Canada, the military is considered to be a minimal and unimportant branch of the government. In New York, the police force was kept minimal pre and post Guilliani and the corruption and crime of the city have shown the fruits of straying from the priority of supporting the Common Defense.

4) The General Welfare

The framers of the Constitution did not understand "General Welfare" to mean you get free money as soon as you retire. This meant that the government had to do things for "everyone" and not just the middle class (whom every Democrat since Bill Clinton has directed all their campaigning and legislation to assist).

5) Security of the Blessing of Liberty

The framers of the Constitution didn't want the United States of America to become a nanny-state. In our day the government is becoming oversized to the point where it is dictating how many miles per gallon a car must be able to travel. Minimum wage laws also come to mind. In some states, like Hawaii, it has tried to fix the price of gas. In other states certain kinds of fat are against the law! The government has also taken it upon itself to end smoking. Again and again people are stripped of their economic liberties when the founding fathers explicitly put clauses to prevent these very travesties.

In summary, the wise framers of our Constitution intended government provide a narrow limit of services. There is no right to privacy, no right to a "living wage", no right to prescription drugs for seniors, or medical services, or food, or the internet or any of the other bread and circuses that people today claim to be entitled to. The founders understood that for liberty to thrive people needed to live their own lives and not have the government do it for them.