By Michael Frazier, Powell County native, National Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award Recipient, and Lobbyist in Frankfort
I am not fond of weddings. The forced polite small talk, the strained smiles, and the cruel heat with humidity at an outdoor wedding during the hottest summer on record as orchestrated by some sadistic wedding planner who must be immune to such elements because they live in Hell- Lord, is there anything worse? Well, there could be no fan in sight…
My lack of fondness for weddings might be the understatement of the year. However, I certainly enjoy sharing the pageantry in celebrating two people in love as they ‘ordain and establish’ their nuptials. The simple phrase should sound familiar to any good Constitutionalist. With simple words placed in the document’s most prominent location, the Preamble laid the foundation for all that followed.
‘We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution…’
While sweating in Hell, I mean a dear friend’s wedding (love you…Congrats), I started thinking about the meaning of these words and their constitutional impact. Ordinary citizens would govern themselves across a continent and over the centuries.
By uniting previously independent states into a vast and indivisible nation, New World republicans would keep Old World monarchs at a distance and, thus, make democracy work on a scale never before dreamed by invoking a covenant between God and country to unite our nation’s States.
Professor Akhil Amar, one of my favorite constitutional scholars at Yale University, said, “The phrases ‘I do’ in an exchange of wedding vows and ‘I accept’ in a contract, the Preamble’s words performed the very thing they described.”
Ordain and establish are words that did more than promise popular self-government. They also embodied and enacted it. The Founders’ use of ‘establish and ordain’ within the Constitution was not merely a text but a deed- a constitution. We, the People, do ordain and in 1789 the most democratic deed the world had ever seen said, ‘Let there be light.’
The declaration doesn’t come without an inalienable truth: the words are meaningless if the deed does back the Constitution. Our Constitution, laws, rules, and spirit of Government are meaningless without the people and those serving who fail to defend with established deeds the very words we all ordained.
The Constitutional should only withstand if we are never complacent to rights and standing on principle. We need not agree, but we must always ensure the ability to agree and disgree-either in speech or press-must always remain defended. Without doubt, this fact is an inalienable truth.
The First Amendment is a reflection of those principles that are established and ordained within the soul of our nation. From Kentucky to Kansas, we see a revival flushing of that promise made 234 years ago to establish and ordain freedom in the United States. We all should be proud to be Americans, celebrating that our Constitution and First Amendment are avenged by this Kansas paper continuing to print and live on.
