Perfecting That Union
- Barack Obama begins his speech with "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union" (1).
- A union refers to one entity, wedded to similar values and ideologies, and the United States has been working toward that perfection for the last 230 years.
- Those simple words really aren't simple, though—they fueled the fire of revolution and created an entire tradition where "farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots" dedicated themselves to fighting for the rights of a brand new democracy. (3)
- Those words and those traditions were preserved forever in the United States Constitution.
- But those words weren't enough "to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States" (7).
- The Constitution stood for more than just freedom—it was also about responsibility, about future generations doing their part "through protests and struggle […] to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time" (8).
- It's a brutal battle we have been fighting for hundreds of years, and a battle we have yet to win.
- The problems of our time aren't so different from the problems that motivated the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, and Obama chose to run for president "to continue the long march of those who came before us" (9).
- While our fashion sense has improved, we want the same thing now that our forefathers wanted then.
- Our children and grandchildren shouldn't have to plummet into the rabbit hole where innocence and generosity have no place, and we have the power to protect them by solving our problems together.