Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people and secure the blessings of their own liberty.
[He believed] that a President of the United States could do more than help insure domestic tranquility, secure the blessings of liberty, and the rest.
"We, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".
"We*, THE PEOPLE* of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".
In a document that was designed to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," it was a stark case of compromise becoming divorced from principle.
I don't believe that a country relying on less than 1 percent of its population to do all of the heavy lifting can hope to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" for long.
Nor were they included among the "People of the United States" who established the Constitution in order to "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity".
They set out 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".
"Public assistance, then, is not mere charity, but a means to 'promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.' " Justice Brennan's quotation was from the preamble to the Constitution.
And for those of us who struggle in the vineyards year after year, trying to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, the story reminds us that humanity has made great progress toward freedom, that each battle for freedom can be long and seemingly futile, but that the goal is worth time and money and effort.
