Sunday, October 01, 2006

 
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

"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, 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"

Establish Justice - Is not Justice a measure of the fairness of actions between individuals and redressing an imbalance? If someone makes huge profit out of your labor by taking more to himself than was agreed or, that is considered to be fair, then that would be an injustice.
If a person committed you to perform an action that you did not agree to be necessary, that too would be an injustice.

Insure Domestic tranquility:
Riots are bad for business as well for your personal safety. Life is an adventure, but it does not have to be personaly dangerous.

Provide for the Common Defence.
This is a toughy in the present as the terrorist is positioned as a danger to the USA. It might be argued that wire-tapping of private conversation would be justified to provide for the common defence. Hmm, more thought needed on this one.

Promote the general Welfare.
NOT promote general warfare. Seems someone has been misreading this part. Government should step in where there is a problem in commerce, education, infrastructure and/or survival. The citizen should take care of himself and then his fellows. But where the actions of one group infringe on the rights of another, government has to step in so that all can benefit from peaceful and safe living and working conditions.

and secure the Blessings of Liberty
What is liberty? Would it not include freedom (ie no consttraint) to live where you like, as you like, without encroaching on the freedom of another? You can not have your freedom bought at the cost of the freedom of another.

to ourselves and our Posterity
So we do not just look at the here and now. Our actions should also benefit our children and their children from here on out.

The above are just the beginning as the matter of "What is Liberty" needs to be fully established. I will tackle that on the next post!

Stephan

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