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Tuesday, September 17, 2002

On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention agreed on the final draft for the US Constitution.

At the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King said the following:
"In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The United States of America was the first nation in the history of humanity founded on the principle that all people from the highest official on down are equally subject to and equally protected by the law. In other nations that ideal would gradually transform monarchies, but on these shores they would be instituted at a country's birth, free from the obstacle of an entrenched autocracy that would impede its growth. The Founders had never before witnessed a society in which liberty and justice were respected fully; they understood these concepts with greater clarity than most of their contemporaries, but not with exact precision. They devised a mechanism through which successive generations could incrementally bring the law into greater conformity with the demands of liberty and justice. True, some freedoms that were taken for granted two centuries ago have been eroded, but others that did not exist then are now a part of the American landscape. We must relearn the lessons of yesterday, celebrate the freedoms that are already in place, and keep watching for clues that will draw us closer to the Dream.