The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America
What the Preamble is and what it says
The dictionary defines a preamble as a preliminary or preparatory statement; an introduction. The Preamble to the Constitution, written in the summer of 1787, is exactly that: an introduction to the document that represents the highest law of this country. The preamble, which is a 52-word paragraph that lists five overall objectives, but is not the law itself, and does not define either the powers of the government or any individual rights. The actual Constitution document does that.
Of course, the Constitution and its original laws were intended to apply only to white, Christian Protestant, straight, property-owning men, but that is a conversation for another time and place.
When I was in the 5th grade, when I was only nine years old, the teacher gave our class an assignment: memorize and prepare to recite verbatim the entire Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. We were given one week to memorize it and prepare for our recitations.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish…
