How Constitution Day came to be

Constitution Day on Sunday commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution 230 years ago and is dedicated to all American citizens.

Oddly enough, Constitution Day came about like so much in Washington D.C., as an add-on to a fiscal spending bill. The infamous omnibus bill happens because Congress fails to pass annual appropriation bills for discretionary spending in a timely fashion, so they are lumped in together usually at the last minute and with little time for debate or discussion. This is hardly the way to govern, but with Congress in session on average only about 135 days a year, it is totally understandable. Try this at you job as a CFO and you’d likely be dispensed of in rapid fashion, but I digress.

Sen. Robert Byrd, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee from West Virginia, introduced Constitution Day legislation into the spending bill of 2004 directing federal departments and agencies to “provide educational and training materials concerning the United States Constitution to each employee of the agency or department on Sept. 17 of each year.” The date coincides with the signing by the 39 Founding Fathers of our foundational document on Sept. 17, 1787.

The legal requirement for all schools, including universities, to be presented with a program on the Constitution today, is laughable. Raise your hand if you think this is a high priority at Berkeley or Evergreen State College. That’s what I thought. Please ask you school age children or any university student if they will receive, or have ever received any instruction or celebration of our U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17. I’m guessing not.

Of the several reasons for forming a new government stated in the Preamble to the Constitution, “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…” it is the last few words, “to ourselves and our Posterity” that worry me the most and may be the most important message for us today.

Civics education and our shared history is not inherited and unless it is taught, it will be lost. It may already be gone. If not, it certainly is slipping. One famous person not too long ago said, “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

The following message from the American Bar Association’s president, Hilarie Bass, are words we can all benefit from. “Let us rededicate ourselves to the work that we as Americans play in preserving the system so that everyone might enjoy the promises of liberty, justice and equality that we all hold dear.”

As citizens of a free republic it is our duty to preserve it. Go to FreeConstitutionCourse.com to learn more.

Mikie Kerr is a constitutional enthusiast who lives in Waikoloa and writes a monthly column for West Hawaii Today