Waltham Amendment Defeated, 4 to 11

First attempt, a fizzle. Waltham City Council voted, 4 for, 11 against, to defeat the motion. I'll add what I recall of the rationale a couple of members stated in the Committee of the Whole session.

Unfortunately, Committee of the Whole sessions are not recorded or cable-cast.

I'd say that's a violation, at least of the spirit, of the open meetings regs in "our fair commonwealth," to paraphrase Click & Clack, the Tappet Bros.

Follow-up Press Coverage, Waltham Daily News Tribune

For however long the page stays online, this is its URL.

The text of the article follows:

Resolution to Recite Preamble at Start of Council Meetings

  

      Well, we're now actually started, with a simple resolution to recite the Preamble to the US Constitution, all 52 words of it, before getting down to the City's business. 

      The resolution to amend the "order of business" in the council Rules manual has been referred to the "Committee of the Whole" for April 6, 2009.

      Here's what it says:

City of Waltham: A Resolution

Whereas The Preamble to the US Constitution is the first sentence in our Constitution, a terse, fifty-two word sentence that takes twenty seconds to recite, give or take, and sets forth, in a powerful and thoughtful order, the six assignments the people gave their government at the moment of its inception, and

Whereas The Preamble (set out below) is a forceful and inspirational mission statement for every one of us, citizens all, and for our government, viz.:

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 [sic], 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.

and

Whereas All Waltham officials are bound by oath to support the Constitution of the United States, as well as the Massachusetts Constitution, its laws and regulations, as well as the ordinances and rules of The City of Waltham, and

Whereas All members of the military services, all Senators and Representatives in Congress, Members of the Commonwealth Legislature, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, under Article VI of the United States Constitution, by Oath or Affirmation, to support and defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and

Whereas The President of the United States is bound by oath or affirmation to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and, to the best of his Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and

Whereas All official meetings of the Waltham City Council are held within the ambit of said Constitution, and

Whereas It is of indisputable benefit and in our best interest to increase every citizen’s awareness and understanding of the US Constitution, and

Whereas That awareness and understanding will be immeasurably enhanced by the public recitation of the Preamble before the start of public sessions, now therefore

Be It Resolved That Rule 31 of the Waltham City Council Rules, setting out the council’s order of business at every regular meeting, be amended to prefix, as a new first item, Recitation of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America, and that current items 1 through 10 be renumbered to become items 2 through 11.

 The President of the Council, shall, at his discretion, lead or appoint a leader or order of leaders, perhaps by council seniority or other order, to initiate the recitation, for the council and members of the public attending, either in unison, or as a prompt-response format. 

He also may, at his discretion, invite the members of council and the public to stand during the recitation.

Respectfully submitted: ( 1). ______________________

( 2). _________________________       ( 3). ______________________
( 4). _________________________       ( 5). ______________________
( 6). _________________________       ( 7). ______________________
( 8)._________________________        ( 9). ______________________
(10). ________________________         (11). ______________________
(12). ________________________         (13). ______________________
(13). ________________________         (14). ______________________

Attest: _____________________________________ Read & Adopted:
Rosario C. Malone, CMC
City Clerk _________________________________ ______________________________________

Here's a video description of the project.

Preamble project, the video:

What the Constitution Means to Us

Over the course of the two-year 2008 presidential campaign, it became fairly obvious that members of the press and members of the candidate pool and members of the US Congress and ordinary citizens ... have hardly a clue about what the United States Constitution is all about.

At the VERY LEAST, it occurred to me, EVERY ONE OF US should know, be able to recite, call to mind at will, any time, any place, the 52 words of the first sentence of the Constitution.

That sentence is called The Preamble to the US Constitution, and it goes like this:

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

The Preamble sets out, from the very first word, the relationship between you and me —the “WE the People” part — and the republic: WE have the powers, rights, duties and responsibilities for running our somewhat representative republic. WE have delegated only SOME of those rights, powers, duties and responsibilities to our governments (plural) — the federal republic, states, cities, school and sewer districts, etc.

The exception to this geopolitical governmental structure is what little of the country we left to its once numerous original occupiers, the "indigenous peoples," the First Americans, Native Americans, or Indian tribes. That land remains just tantalizingly out of reach, as controlled/owned by separate sovereign nations, supposedly 4FR, “as long as Grass grows and water runs,” Andrew Jackson's promise to the Indians as he sent his general off to enforce Jackson’s very own “Indian Removal Act.” Historian Howard Zinn has a detailed web essay on Jackson's genocidal activities against our First Americans. I commend it to your attention. It appears that the Zionists have studied Jackson's playbook (see “The Incredible Shrinking Palestine”). Jackson, of course, followed a long line of illustrious genocidalists, beginning with Christopher Columbus's extermination of the Arawak Indians of Hispaniola, from 1492 to a handful of years later. But I digress.

We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We ordain. We establish. We, the people, do that. Did that, in ratifying the Constitution in 1789, and the Bill of Rights on Dec. 15, 1791.

That seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it?

The people have all the power. There is no federal government without the people having created it, ordained it, established it. There is no federal government without “the consent of the governed,” as noted in that other document, the signing of which is commemorated on the back of the $2 “federal reserve note.”

In the words of the youngest among us, “WE” are the boss of “THEM”; and “THEM” are the folks in the republic we elect to run it for us, day to day. Supposedly on our behalf.

Did We the People set any directions for the new Republic we created? Did We the People create a mission statement to guide the overall conduct of the Republic We the People established?

You betcha we did. And what were they? What ARE these general instructions? What is that “mission statement”?

In other words, why did we ordain and establish this Republic? What did we expect our agents, our employees, our representatives, our elected and appointed officials to do with the deliberately limited, but nonetheless huge dose of people-power we delegated to them?

Well, that's what appears between “We the people of the United States…” and “…do ordain and establish.” The RULES begin with the second sentence of the Constitution, with Article I, Section 1: “All legislative Powers herein granted2 shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

These are our expectations, our directions to our government.

We the People … ordained and established this Republic:*

… in order to:

1. 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

You can consider these priorities in at least two ways — individually, and as an ordered list, a prioritized list (which is why I like to number the six imperatives). As a prioritized list, it is good to notice that there are THREE priorities that come before #4, "provide for the common defense."

Why is that significant? You may remember that members of the 2001 to 2009 administration kept repeating, over and over and over and over and... etc., that "keeping you, Charlie, and your wife and your children SAFE is my first responsibility." (That was how the then-president G. Walker Bush put it to $7+-million-a-year anchorperson Charlie Gibson in one oval office interview. When I find the link, I'll add it here).

Well, the President, and All the President's Men and Women were absolutely, rock-solid WRONG about that. But they did use it as an excuse to ram through power-grabbing, rights-strangling legislation, take illegal actions, invade another country or two, torture prisoners of war, stealthily invade our electronic privacy — illegally — and those NSA wire-taps are still probably in place in the facilities of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Comcast, BellSouth (did the NSA ever get into Qwest's main trunk switching stations? Were they set up before 9/11/2001? Interesting questions).

That 2001-2009 gang should have paid attention to the Preamble, and the rest of the Constitution before launching their illegal capers, and on so many other matters.

* Short footnote on The Republic:

The United States is/are a Republic, not a “democracy,” Period. There are only two instances in our Constitution, as amended, where a simple majority of We the People (the “demos”) get to directly “rule” (the “cracy” thing) some itty-bitty part of our Republic, and that is in electing representatives from our Congressional Districts, and our two senators, since Article XVII, The 17th Amendment, was ratified April 8, 1913. Until then, the state's legislators, when they could manage to agree, elected US Senators. Joe Biden's state, Delaware, went without senators for four years.

You should pay careful attention to people who insist that the US is a democracy. At best, it shows that they don't know what they're talking about. When they happen to be folks who have regularly taken oaths to “support and defend” the US Constitution — or, in the special case of the President, to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution (at least “to the best of [his] ability,” which is a gaping loophole we should remove from his/her oath of office. If that “ability” is pathetically wanting, recent history should have taught us that we definitely cannot afford a president of such impoverished talents and should remove him/her from office.

Such a one demonstrably neither tried to:

1. form a more perfect Union (in this case, applying both to labor unions and the Republic),
   
2. establish Justice (both as a concept and as a cabinet-level department),
   
3. insure domestic Tranquility (how rapidly are your hands shaking? We all probably need tranquilIZERS after the Cheney/Bush run),
   
4. provide for the common defense (Trillions spent on our military, and they couldn't even shoot down four lumbering passenger jetliners in our most populous urban corridor, from Boston to New York to Washington, D.C. and Virginia. I still can't believe that virtually everyone in charge of the military was given PROMOTIONS after what officially seems to be their abject, stunning failure!),
   
5. promote the general Welfare (welfare for generals, maybe; welfare for Wall Street gamblers (formerly known as "bankers" and “investment bankers” and “hedge fund managers” and just plain ordinary, though gifted, Ponzi scammers. The Nigerian Spam-Scam industry (”Dear Honorable Sir, Because of the untimely passing of my [minister of the interior, richest man alive, etc.], I have $58.7 billion I'm trying to smuggle out of my impoverished country," etc.) should study our Financial Gambling Services Sector more closely). As for the rest of us, our Socialistic-minded officials and Welfare system generally rewards the richest and most powerful in our midst — actually, NOT in our midst, as they pay billions to isolate themselves from the rude unwashed masses, the “demos.” And as for trying to
   
6. secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, the prior administration went on a veritable rampage to wrap itself in secrecy, in false patriotism, in the flag, to use our military as a shield AGAINST the people, especially any and all critics, to drain our Treasury dry, and strip any and all potential blessings of liberty from Congress, the courts and from We the People, of Preamble note. (See above).
   

And it was for EXACTLY that reason — that paranoid, conspiracy-theory-steeped attitude the Framers of our Constitution had about any and all governments run by human beings, now, as then, mostly of rich, old white men — that they worked so hard to prevent the arrogation/concentration of power by splitting power at least four ways (House, Senate, Executive, Judicial), did NOT create a directly-elected executive and judicial branch, and, in extreme cases of arrogation and usurpation of power and/or dangerous incompetence (seems we just had eight years of both, a really deadly combination), the reason that they created the mechanism for impeachment, trial and removal from office.

(Just so you know: The fact that the House Speaker took "impeachment off the table" — unilaterally amending the Constitution she swore to “support and defend,” is itself sufficient grounds for impeachment and removal of her from office. Apply the Preamble Test to the Speaker's actions — remembering that words seldom count, but actions do.)

The speaker was apparently more worried that "We the People" would object to ending our Constitutional crisis by Constitutional means and, because we're all so stupid and manipulable, whipped into an ignorant frenzy by market-tested, three-word Republican slogans (tax-and-spend, partisan witch-hunt, partisan Clinton pay-back, cut-and-run, terrorist-rights wusses, gun-control fanatics, Obama is black, war-losing wimps, etc.) refuse to elect a Democratic president than she was about honoring her oath of office. But maybe I'm just being picky, picky, and members of Congress, like Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (who knew he was not only a bombastic gas-bag of an entertainer, but also an “aristocratic, addicted, bombastic gas-bag”), have themselves devolved into mere political entertainers and wily fund-raisers. Although I would suggest that I know of hardly anyone who could subsist on a diet of bumper-stickers, unless it was slathered with Colgate toothpaste and perhaps wrapped around dirt cookies women and children are now eating in Africa.

We all should suggest that every Republican “I Want Obama to Fail” obstructionists sup on their own slogans. And remind them that only a REAL man (or woman), with brass stomachs, has the acid strength to digest their own words. After all, the plastics are all made from oil, and the Republicans love oil so much they'd sacrifice anyone else's children to get it. As they have so amply demonstrated.

But, “Don't worry; be happy. Every little thing's/ gonna be all right.” We will all get the opportunity to try living on such a diet as the Global Depression of 2008, 9, ... spreads and deepens. I hope Tom's Toothpaste isn't too fattening. And New Orleans could be big in dirt cookies, with that all-American topsoil turned into Mississippi River mud. John Boehner, you be sure to pass a law giving Mississippi Mud Cookie Manufacturers a real tax break, y'hear?

A multi-billion-dollar earmark for manufacturers of mud-slurry mills would be doubly good; in Africa, the women have to use large mortar-and-pestle-like stones, by hand, to make the mud more uniform. AND, since we will soon have to do without indoor plumbing, the cookies will help to restore good topsoil to our lands, so despoiled by the Agribusiness Welfare Program that encouraged and supported a mono-cropping mentality in the Archer-Midlands. (John, you should really talk with Tom Vilsack about this.) The earmark should be worth at least three or four million in campaign contributions (though if it were me, I'd hold out for 50% of the appropriations amount — you guys sell us out for mere chump-change. I can't imagine that any of you even studied arithmetic. Our nation's “bankers” certainly didn’t, and some of them thought they were rocket scientists.

But back to the Preamble: As the example above may suggest, the six compact instructions we deliver to our elected and government officials, our agents, our employees, in fact – we are paying their salaries, expenses, some of their room and board, transportation, Secret Service escorts, special, lavishly accoutered, secret offices in the Capitol Building (mostly in space abandoned by the Supreme Court when they moved into their own digs across from the Library of Congress, I think it is). Etc. — can serve as a very useful “Ratings Guide” or benchmark against which to compare the job they are doing for us. It's only recently dawned on me that this is indeed the case, so I find myself a bit awkward at it. However, I can imagine that maybe some outfit like the Princeton Educational Testing Service, they of the SAT, scholastic aptitude test — or should it be scholastic accomplishment test, I wonder — could design a "test instrument” with which we could gauge our representatives’ performance, with far more precision/accuracy than any even sophisticated listing of votes cast or avoided. (By sophisticated, I mean taking into account how these clever employees of ours can work and vote in committee or markup committee to completely gut a bill, but have it appear that they support it in “open session.”)

In order to: 1) Form A More Perfect Union

form a more perfect Union,

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

---------------

So, what does "form a more perfect Union" mean?

When the Constitution was drafted, by 55 fairly well-to-do white guys, still ringing in the air was the 1775 document asserting that: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Because women, slaves and First Americans (Indians, the indigenous population, Native Americans) could not vote, there was a little bit of perfection missing — lots of philosophical room to grow in, you might say.  Had Bill Clinton been around then, he might have told disenfranchised Native Americans, women and slaves that voting "depends on what the meaning of 'men' is."

Seems to me we've come a long way, now that we've had the inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama, even though a well-educated white boy, the head of our judicial system, screwed up the administration of the Constitutional Oath of Office, and a waaay, waaaaaay too polite first-ever African American president-elect let him get away with it when Obama apparently (if his interrupted delivery and body language, etc., is any guide) KNEW that the Chief Justice was screwing up the administration of the oath. I mean, Obama had taught Constitutional Law for a time, never mind having had the one semester of it that all law school students take in their first year of law school.

What Obama should have done, in my view, was stop the Chief Justice, politely of course, and ask, "Excuse me. That's not the wording of the oath. Do you have a written copy with you? Does anybody? Or is there anyone here who has a copy of the Constitution that the Chief Justice can read from? Or should I dictate it to you, and then you repeat to me, and then I'll repeat it after you, so as not to make a complete mockery of this condition precedent to my taking office as President of the United States?!"

I think that would have been the ballsiest thing Obama could have done — and WHAT a great start it would have made to his term of office. Just imagine: the new president of the United States is demanding that the Constitution be followed, to the WORD! And demanding that of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. It would have been a classic!

In retrospect, it seems to me that this, our highest judicial officer, one John G. Roberts, showed the American people and the president-elect a significant lack of respect by not being prepared for administering the oath properly — either by having memorized it, cold, or by having a copy of the Constitution from which to read.  And, oh by the way, the final sentence fragment, "So help me, God," is NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT in the Constitution. For it to be there would have violated one of the first founding principals of our Republic, the separation of church and state.

In fact, I'm of the opinion that no president should ever include it in his/her oath of office again. Nor should the phrase be in the statutory oath of office required of our Members of Congress, soldiers, officers, federal, state and local officeholders. It actually flies in the face of, contradicts the one part of the Constitution that candidate Willard "Mitt" Romney knew during the debates, namely Article VI, ¶ 3: 

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualifi-cation to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [emphasis added]

And saying "So help me, God," sounds like a religious test to me. I'm just sayin'.

Another warning worth noting:  

When you hear anyone call the United States "a democracy," that lets you know that they either don't understand the US Constitution or that they are lying, and usually lying for a "feel-good" political purpose or to mislead (We invaded Iraq to "make the world safe for democracy," "we're spreading democracy all over the world," etc. The US is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. IT IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. (Period) (.)

There are only TWO instances where a simple majority of the people (the "demos" in democracy) "rules" (the "cracy" part) in this republic of ours — in elections to the US House and elections to the US Senate (and senators were originally elected by state legislators, not ordinary citizens, until 1913, when the 16th Amendment was ratified. And, in retrospect, the 16th was probably a bad idea).

For every other federal activity, the Framers put in place all manner of checks and balances to GUARANTEE that the United States would NOT be a democracy--that is, NOT governed by a simple majority of its citizens. (Again, period.) (.)

Some notable examples: Only the House can impeach; the Senate tries the impeachments and decides the sentence (removal from office). All money bills must originate in the House. Only Congress can declare war. Only the President can pardon criminals. Only the Supreme Court can make the final determination on what a statute means, or what the Ninth Amendment means, until they overrule themselves, of course. Or Congress does. Or the people do (but that's a very slow operation). Only the Electoral College elects the President, not the people (The framers did NOT want a president elected by a simple majority vote of the citizens. Not, not not. They were almost as afraid of mob rule as they were of the government of men they were setting up, given that governments of men ALWAYS tried to usurp the rights of and power of others, to aggrandize their own power and wealth, and oppress anyone who wouldn't fight back.  You perhaps remember the Bush comment that "This would be a heck of a lot easier if this were a dictatorship.  And I was the dictator, heh, heh? You can find it on YouTube if you don't remember it. (And that's not an exact quote.)

And you're welcome to contribute your own definitions.

In order to: 2) establish Justice

form a more perfect Union,

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, ...

----------

So, what does "establish Justice" mean?

Here are some synonyms, examples, definitions. From the thesaurus:

justice
noun
1 I appealed to his sense of justice fairness, justness, fair play, fair-mindedness, equity, evenhandedness, impartiality, objectivity, neutrality, disinterestedness, honesty, righteousness, morals, morality.
2 they were determined to exact justice punishment, judgment, retribution, compensation, just deserts.
3 an order made by the justices judge, magistrate, jurist.

PHRASES
do justice to the movie, didn't do justice to the book, consider fairly, be worthy of.

And from the dictionary:

justice
noun
1 just behavior or treatment : a concern for justice, peace, and genuine respect for people.
• the quality of being fair and reasonable : the justice of his case.
• the administration of the law or authority in maintaining this : a tragic miscarriage of justice.
• ( Justice) the personification of justice, usually a blindfolded woman holding scales and a sword.
2 a judge or magistrate, in particular a judge of the supreme court of a country or state.

PHRASES
bring someone to justice arrest someone for a crime and ensure that they are tried in court.
do one's elf justice be as fair to your elf as possible, keeping in mind how much smaller than you they really are.
do someone/something justice (or do justice to someone/something) do, treat, or represent with due fairness or appreciation : the brief menu does not do justice to the food.
in justice to, out of fairness to : I say this in justice to both of you.
rough justice see rough.

DERIVATIVES
justiceship   noun ( in sense 2).
ORIGIN late Old English iustise [administration of the law] via Old French from Latin justitia, from justus (see just).

And "establish" is pretty straightforward: set up, put in place, self-sustaining, with a hint of mint (as in "perma-mint").

Of course, what it takes to establish Justice is the kind of "infrastructure" that folks who claim to be "free-market capitalists" would never be willing to pay for on their own, y'know what I'm sayin'? (Like roads, bridges, schools, court-houses, teachers, farmers, soldiers and police, firemen and such. I like to say that if you show me a George Steinbrenner who says "I'll put up the new Yankee stadium completely on my own nickel, I'll extend the sewers, water, gas, electric, subway, roads, buy all the land myself, and I'll make it back in attendance, etc., and won't ask for city handouts, tax reductions, eminent domain" and I'll show you a free-market economist.  Or "Show me a big-box Wal*Mart that comes into a community and signs a contract promising 10,000 living-wage jobs, with superior medical insurance,  for 40 years, promises to extend all the roads, services, pays for the expanded police force, never asks if it can keep all the sales taxes they collect, and I'll show you a free-market capitalist country."

Of course Mr. Steinbrenner is unwilling to do the "free market" thing — he insists on public welfare, as does Wal*Mart. Were I a geopolitical entity handling their welfare requests, I'd tell them all to go to Hell, which is a very small town in Norway, just east of Trondheim, which I'm sure could really use some fresh input from US business welfare recipients.

In order to: 3) Insure Domestic Tranquility

form a more perfect Union,

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

------

So, what does "insure domestic Tranquility" mean?

Does it mean constant war between various factions of government and We the People? Does it mean constant erosion of people's rights? Does it mean the siphoning off of a nation's wealth by a very small number of the richest and most powerful of its population?

Does it mean a government that constantly attempts to train its civilians to "Be afraid. Be Very Afraid!"? A government that places surveillance cameras at every corner of every street, every store. But not every corner of Congress, where the citizens need them to exercise the Constitutional role of Congressional Oversight?  [Readers should note that when I speak of "Congressional Oversight," I mean citizens micro-managing their elected senators, representatives and all the federal officials who we intend to be busy executing governmental policies in furtherance of the six priorities set out in the Preamble. This is not the general meaning given to what used to be called congressional oversight, before the American Invertebrate Incumbent Party took over all but a half dozen or so positions in Congress back in the Regan/Bush I administration, when the nation was plunged into international debt and a pattern of illegal governmental activities.]

How about this:

tranquil

adjective

free from disturbance; calm : her tranquil gaze | the sea was tranquil. See note at calm.

DERIVATIVES

tranquility |ˌtra ng ˈkwilitē| |-ˈkwɪlɪti| (also tranquillity) noun

tranquilly  adverb

ORIGIN late Middle English: from French tranquille or Latin tranquillus.

There's an interesting piece in Wikipedia about the health benefits of tranquility. Who knew? Along with a "tranquility map" of England, Scotland and Wales (what happened to Ireland?). 

One thought seems obvious: Without a "more perfect Union" and an established system of Justice, there's probably not a snowball's chance in Spring of achieving any lasting sense of domestic Tranquility.

In order to: 5) Promote the General Welfare

form a more perfect union,
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

In order to: 4) Provide for the common defense

form a more perfect Union,

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

------

I never ceased to be amused by the fact that members of the Cheney/Bush administration kept insisting that their "first responsibility to the nation" was to keep us "safe," or "keep your kids safe," etc., from "terrorist attacks."

As will be definitively proven sometime in the future, by "the judgement of history," there was probably not one single higherf-up member of that administration who ever read the US Constitution. If they had read even the very first sentence, they would have seen that "provide for the common defense" was the FOURTH priority on our mission statement, the Preamble.

I also note with interest that each of the six priorities has capitalized one or more "operative nouns" within it, EXCEPT for "provide for the common defense" (spelled "defence" in that old-timey, way-back-when style they had). Wassup widat, one wonders.

What does stand out is that, without a more perfect Union, Justice and domestic Tranquility, there's not a whole heck of a lot worth defending, if you ask me. We'd all probably be proving out Thos. Hobbes' contention that the "natural life of man is solitary, nasty, brutish and short" and would perhaps rather shuffle off this mortal coil to seek out our 72 virgins (hopefully, they'd complement the particular reproductive bent of each shufflee, rather than be, as ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's puppet Achmed, The Dead Terrorist, discovers, 72 more virgins just like him who got the stick, as it were.

However you define "common defense," it's clear that "common" means to cover the largest portion of We the People, not the multi-national corporations that have dominated our efforts at colonizing the world, from United Fruit in Guatemala, ITT, Kennecott & Anaconda Copper in Chile, supposedly Cuba's hemp and kenaf competition for Bill Hearst's pine-based newsprint enterprises in the US ("You provide the illustrations; I'll provide the war"), the oil and war sectors of our economy, etc. Remember that the Iraq invasion was first called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) until someone recognized the parapraxis (Freudian schlep, or a unintended and troublesome trek towards the truth) involved and renamed the operation Oil, Iraq's, For-us (OIF)--also seen as Operation Iraqi Fiefdom.

Finally, for this essay at least, the notion that the US was "attacked" by "terrorists" on 9/11/2001, has not yet been proven in any court of law or with any full, independent investigating commission with access to all civilian, military and governmental records and witnesses — definitely including the boxes and boxes of secret records that Dick Cheney threw his back out on January 19, 2009 whilst removing from them from the multiple Mosler Standup Safes in his office as he cleared out for Joe the Vice President (aka Joe Biden).

Our national position on Cheney's (and Bush's, if he had any), records should definitely be, "Dude, those are are records. They're the 'work product' of your eight years on our payroll. You may have thought you had a job in your own private little industry, but actually, you were supposedly working for the "common" good of all Americans, not just you and your "deferred compensation" from the war machines Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, etc. So cough 'em up. All of 'em, Dickie-boy." (No respect intended.)

And of course, as a country we are definitely NOT safe, with an undermanned and overextended military, broken hardware, dead and broken soldiers, a nation in the deepest debt we've ever been in, and a world-wide depression triggered by our very own rogue Financial Gambling Casino Services Sector. (If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics un- and underemployment measure, labeled "U-6", we've been in "double-digit unemployment" for more than a year; as of January, 2009, we're at 14.9% of the "workforce" unemployed or underemployed (not making a wage sufficient to support their families).

As a nation, we really can't afford to let corporations sell off our complete manufacturing capabilities. Like selling off to China the company that provided 88% of the permanent magnets for all of our so-called smart bomb guidance systems. China, of all countries? Why would we do that? Wouldn't the billionaires who sold out recognize that when those "smart bombs" are dropped on the US, they could get hit, too. Unless, of course, they live in Switzerland, Tahiti, Monaco, which well may be the case. Maybe David Cay Johnston can take a look-see into that now that he's retired from the NYTimes.

Then, of course, these million- and billionaires need federal welfare to "maintain their lifestyle." F. Scott Fitzgerald may have been right when he claimed that "The rich are different than you and me." Not only, as Hemingway is said to have riposted, to they have more money, but, generally, they also have an extraordinary sense of entitlement which (I aver) has absolutely nothing to do with merit, deserving, rationality, morality, insuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare or the establishment of justice.

And while almost anyone would have to concede that the French Revolution got a little bit out of hand in the tumbrils-to-the-guillotine department, the revolutionaries weren't all that far off in the establishment of justice and promotion of the general welfare and the securing of the Blessings of Liberty to themselves and their kids (as Alberto Gonzales liked to say it was his job to protect, as US Attorney General — "the kids," or "your kids" as he so frequently put it) department.

We should also be reminded of the interesting words of the July 4, 1775 document, The Declaration of Independence, which offered this assessment of the relationship between We the People and governments:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis supplied]

We've already had, as a nation, three wars to establish that Declaration of Independence doctrine that it is the "…right of the people to alter or to abolish…" a government which is "destructive of" "… the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The three: two with Great Britain (the War of Independence, 1776-1782, and The War of 1812; and amongst ourselves (the Civil War of 1861-1865).

One might well ask the members of our current local, state and federal governments whether they would support and defend THAT particular right of the people, as supported by the 10th Amendment — to change or abolish the existing government. Such a war as I imagine would result would at the very least really, really cut back on overpopulation.

In order to: 6) Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity

form a more perfect union,
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