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Constitution Day celebrated with gathering at library
Editor’s note: Area civic clubs will gather at noon today at Poplar Bluff Library to mark Constitution Day. Senior Judge Michael Pritchett will speak.
To the Editor,
(At) the 237th anniversary of the United States Constitution, signed September 17, 1787, let us remember this document and the enduring impact it has had in shaping and preserving our freedom. Since The first observance of Constitution Week by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution was so successful in 1955 that on January 5, 1956, Senator Knowland introduced a Senate Joint Resolution to have the President designate Sept. 17-23 annually as Constitution Week. The resolution was adopted on July 23, 1956, and signed into Public Law 915 on Aug. 2, 1956.
The Daughters of the American Revolution’s mission is to promote education, patriotism and historic preservation. We as Americans enjoy many freedoms, guaranteed by the Constitution. One of the blessings we have is the “freedom to read” which we enjoy and one that many probably take for granted. Throughout history, where in times of dictatorship or anarchy, the t first things destroyed are books and public records, always aimed at extinguishing free thinking, enlightened education, and the sense of the history from which a people developed.
The statesmen who debated and drafted our founding documents were scholars who had read and studied classic writings and centuries of history to discern those principles most successful upon which to base the new American republic. Many studied Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Essay on Politics in their original language. They covered Exodus to John Locke, and understood the factors at play in the rise and fall of empires.
Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John and Samuel Adams, Hamiltone and Wythe, to name only a few, engaged in serious study from early in their lives. Correspondence and documents have been preserved which show that in the span of the twenty-five years or so leading up to American independence these ideas were discussed, debated, accepted, rejected, modified and deliberated with logic and careful consideration. Finally, a perspective emerged which proved the principles necessary upon which to frame a balanced law for the people- not monarchy or dictatorship at one extreme and not anarchy at the other. At great risk of conviction and capital punishment for treason they had lived under restrictions of the press, of speech, and religion by the King of England, and had studied the annihilation of cultures brought about by dictators throughout history.
Little wonder that the freedom of the press, speech and peaceable assembly were guaranteed in the First Amendment. Much in the news and public commentary today seems to revolve back to the rights secured by the First Amendment. Over the past couple of decades our American society has been cultivated to be “politically correct” and to “celebrate diversity.” What great reminders to show respect for one another… especially in a time where common courtesy and moral values appear to be undermined in group think of victimhood or a cavalier attitude of “if it feels good it must be right.”
Emotionally driven ideas not based on those fundamental truths which stand the tests of time and logic are very much a threat to our republic. Perhaps we can take this Constitution Day to revisit this great document and to reflect upon the fundamental truths upon which it is framed, and to logically evaluate how those truths apply today and how they are being taught in our education systems. Even better, perhaps we should go back to study the founder’s sources – from Cicero to Montesquieu, and those centuries in between.
Kind Regards,
Margaret Shackleford, Poplar Bluff Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution