Recently my husband and I watched Ken Burns’s documentary The American Revolution. It was particularly poignant because my husband is British and I was born in America.
Brian was recruited in 1995 by a U.S. company that required his expertise in European manufacturing. He arrived, H1B visa in hand, then later a Green Card, then he made the final decision to become a U.S. citizen in 2003. I asked him, “What do you remember about your citizenship classes?” He quickly responded, “I remember how impressed I was in the checks and balances of the three branches of my new government!”
We watched the program as a newly formed Congress struggled and grappled to find not only the right words for the Constitution but for the right way that government should function so that no one at the top could ever take more power than the other two parts of the government. The Judicial, the Legislative, and the Executive had equal rights and responsibilities to one another, and its members gladly and freely swore an oath to preserve and protect those rights.
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution is an introductory statement that explains the purpose and principles:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Watching the documentary was the first time we both were confronted with the harsh reality of how much blood the Americans as well as the British shed, and the lives lost in trying to become its own country.
Watching our history unfold over this documentary and experiencing in real time what has become of those ideals in our Constitution, which was ratified in 1788, has been disheartening.
