The Constitution Was Made for a Moral People: It’s Time to Teach Our Kids That Lesson
This year, as America marked its 250th birthday, we rightly celebrated the courage, clarity, conviction, and moral character of the founders who declared independence.
Yet the Declaration was only the beginning.
The hard work of creating a system of government that could preserve liberty and entrust citizens with the responsibility of governing themselves was still ahead.
For more than a decade after 1776, our young nation wrestled with that challenge. The delegates who gathered at the Constitutional Convention did not arrive with unanimous agreement.
They represented different states, different interests, and different visions.
They debated. They disagreed. They compromised. Yet they remained committed to the belief that ordinary citizens, through thoughtful participation and a willingness to seek the common good, could accomplish something extraordinary.
At the heart of the Constitution and America’s experiment in self-government are three words: “We the People.” Our Constitution empowers citizens to govern themselves while protecting the freedoms to worship, speak, assemble, innovate, and pursue opportunity.
But those freedoms endure only when citizens participate in the life of their communities and their country.
George Washington, in his Farewell Address, linked the preservation of our constitutional system to “wisdom and virtue,” calling religion and morality “indispensable supports” of political prosperity.
John Adams was even more direct: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.” The founders understood that self-government depends not only on the laws and institutions they created, but on the character of the people entrusted with them.
Being a good citizen means more than knowing your rights; it means practicing self-discipline, taking responsibility, and seeking the common good. Likewise, we cannot defend what we do not understand, exercise our rights responsibly if we do not know what they protect, or teach the next generation why our system of government is worth preserving.
One way we can become students of the Constitution is by participating in Constitution Day. In 2004, Congress established Constitution Day as an annual opportunity, and a requirement for schools receiving federal funds, to provide educational programming about the Constitution and commemorate its signing on Sept. 17, 1787.