“We the People……”

By Rev. Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher

San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

The Constitution of the United States starts with the words, “We the People,” not “Me The People.” Donald Trump and those who follow him would change those words and, in effect, replace Democracy with Racism.

The Constitution has been the means to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,” and “promote the general Welfare,” of all the people of this nation. Nowhere does the document say “for a select few or a chosen few.” Nowhere does it say “for White people only,” although that had been the implied interpretation in the beginning.

The Bill of Rights, inspired by Thomas Jefferson and drafted by James Madison, was adopted in 1791 as the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution; adding such guarantees as Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech Press, Petition and Assembly, Due Process of Law and Equality before the law. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, known as “The Civil War Amendments,” abolished slavery, declared all persons born naturalized in the United States as America citizens, including African Americans; and prohibited each government in the United States from denying citizens the right to vote based on that citizens’s race, color or previous condition of servitude.

We keep America great by exercising our right to vote in spite of efforts by Trump, the Republican U.S. Senate which refuses to uphold its oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the U.S. Department of Justice which is charged by its creation to uphold the laws of the land. The protests we see today in our cities is a guaranteed Constitutional right. The violence is not.

The right to vote is a guaranteed state right, not regulated by the President nor under his jurisdiction. Let us not get so caught up with Donald Trump that, in protest, we ignore our guaranteed rights as “We the people” and not the “Me the People” of Trump and his racist supporters who really mean “Make America White Again.”

America had never stopped being great until Donald Trump, Mitch McConell of the United States Senate and William Barr of the U.S. Department of Justice decided that the President is more important than the U.S. Constitution and its guarantees of more than 200 years. Something to think about.