Yesterday I was thrilled to be celebrating Constitution Day in our nation's capital with many friends from both Hillsdale College and ATA (my new place of employment). More than 200 years ago, our Founders drafted a document and pledged their lives and sacred honor to defend the God-given, unalienable rights outlined therein.
It must have been a thrilling day, full of anticipation and hope for the "more perfect Union" birthed. But it also must have been terrifying and ominous. After losing fathers and sons, brothers and friends to Red Coat bullets and disease in the Revolutionary War, the men that signed the Constitution must have feared, at least in part, that the peaceful transfer of power from one individual to the next through elections would not be possible.
Think of the mourning that generation did - everyone intimately knew someone who was killed, and battles occurred in the backyards of citizens all across the original states. What resolve that must have taken. What confidence they must have had to sign that document. What hope they must have felt that by the Constitution they could help secure the blessing of liberty for their children, their children's children, and even for us, although it cost their generation thousands of lives.
This September, I am grateful for those who wrote and upheld (and uphold) it. And today, September 18, I will remember, like our Founders must have on September 18 so many years ago, my brother who passed now 11 years ago at the young age of 17. He didn't die in battle as the Founder's brothers might have. Rather, he died in freedom, enjoying for all his days the gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As I commemorate that painful day for me and my family, I also remember the many families who have endured such painful days throughout our nation's history so that I can live, mourn, hope and pursue happiness in liberty and freedom.
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