Once upon a time....

In the beginning, there was chaos and idealism: there was no constitution. The interdependence of sovereign states weighed heavily on the success of the American war of independence from its mother, Great Britain. A group of aristocratic men had met in the summer of 1776 and decided the fate of their own lands was best represented by themselves. Their king had not heard them, his governors shunned them, but in the end he could not drown out their distant pleas represented by the bayonet, and the bloody battlefields of a once compliant colony gone badly wrong. From this seeming anarchy rose a phoenix of Herculean proportions; from the fire rose a nation forged by blood, brute, and determination, unlike any the world had ever seen. Thirteen confederated colonies sought their right to exist and earned that right through their own design. They were no longer reliant on their mother, they had proved their own right to existence in the wild. A proud network of educated men set out to define the role of a nation that would exist for centuries beyond their lifetimes. On July 4, 1776, the United States was born.

Our Constitution was unlike anything ever conceived by human intelligence. It was a pact between citizen and government. It was a bond setting the boundaries of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Every citizen was entitled to live and die as he or she saw fit. It was the duty of their government to make certain this right was protected by all means necessary. Of course, there were many ideas of how this constitution would be outlined. There were disagreements, concessions, but finally a draft was adopted by the Constitutional Convention. Now, there existed explicit rights and liberties of the new nation's people. There were clear roles for different aspects of the government's function, such as representation and judicial matters. The government was free of any religion and was adherent that it would never adopt laws regarding the institution. The judiciary was the final judge of whether the laws created by Congress met the tests set by the Constitution. An executive was given distinct authority to oversee the laws of the United States were properly enforced. The role of the United States' government has changed, but within the confines of the same constitution given life over 200 years ago.

Is the Constitution of the United States a static or living document? Can it bend with the will of the people or is it rigid and inflexible? The answer is simple: the Constitution of the United States is a living document. It has the ability to change and modify itself through amendments. Amendments to its verbiage and rights. These are enacted through the will of the people, through majorities in the Congress and their respective state legislatures. The Constitution, however, cannot bend toward the will of one individual. It is not meant to represent that popular sentiments of the day. If we allow one person to dominate the course of our nation, then we, as citizens, must take the Constitution and rip it into small pieces; thereby, delivering ourselves to the rule of tyranny on July 3, 1776.