Today is a big day...

Say what you will, the last ten years have shown a real change in how America views itself.

No one here at the Bund knows more about how that view has changed than I, and we've all butted heads while determining which view is the "right" one. We all have issues with Obama, but to suggest that Obama's inauguration as the first black President isn't a significant milestone in American history is impossible.

More than his race or ethnicity, however, I think it was a milestone in that Obama was the first President to be elected after saying that he felt the Constitution was a charter of "negative liberties" and that a fundamental reform of our nation's founding principles needed to be undertaken. No other President has ever made those kind of campaign promises and still been elected.

"Reform" Presidents of the past promised to work to ensure that America lived up to the ideals and standards laid out in the Constitution, suggesting we were falling short of a goal in our nation's development as the leading democratic society on earth. Presidents like Lincoln, who felt that the Union as a whole was the greater good and fought to preserve it against those that would have watched it fall apart in the name of "state's rights"... or LBJ, who signed into law the very equality spelled out in our founding documents but never fully realized in our society until the end of the 20th Century.

Our "Hope and Change" President today ran on the promise of "fundamental reform" of the very concepts our nation was built upon. I'm not putting words into his mouth here... these are exactly what he has said, time and time again since he announced his candidacy for President in 2007. This sort of sentiment has had one very impacting result over the course of the last few years... it has brought a renewed interest in what is actually written in the Constitution, and what those words mean to us today.

September 17th is "Constitution Day". This day was made a national holiday in 2004 by an Act of Congress that George Bush signed into law, which required that today, of all days of the year, all public schools focus on teaching the Constitution to students. In a time when most Americans under the age of 35 have never read the Constitution, even once, I think this is an important step in educating our youth as to just how precious and transformative the Constitution was (and is) to the world in general. 223 years ago, 39 of 42 State delegates put their names to the Constitution, and it became the founding framework of the Grand Republic that we know and enjoy today. Why have so many people forgotten that fact, and what that means to us in the modern world?

Back in the late 70's (when I was just a lad), we had to memorize such fundamental statements as the Preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address. We knew the Bill of Rights, and what they represented to the country at the time. I'm no fan of Government dictating what can or can't be taught in schools... but in this case, I think it is a great idea. If you attend a school that gets money from the Government to operate, then you should have more than a basic understanding of how that government works and under what structure it is allowed to operate and function.

Our understanding of what the US Government is has changed over the centuries since its inception. In the early 1800s, many questioned just what the Government could and couldn't do. By the middle of the 19th Century, many saw it as a tyrannical oppressor bent on subjugating the individual States by force. By the turn of the 20th Century, many saw the Government as nothing more than an advocate of the wealthy and privileged against the poor and working members of our society. Today, we are told that the problems facing our society can only be fixed by the Government, and the individual is helpless without it, so we should surrender our individual rights and property to further the Government's efforts.

Obviously, none of the above were ever 100% true, and our society and nation have survived trial after trial in our efforts to achieve the goals set forth in the Constitution and the other founding documents... goals and ideals like "all men are created equal" and "justice for all" and "to form a more perfect Union". We aren't finished yet, but we are still more than capable of getting to our "goal"... and today's growing fascination with reading and re-reading the Constitution by so many of our citizens is a good thing.

Encouraging a new generation of Americans to understand just what the fundamental tenants of our government actually are can only help our nation, and I am convinced that it will be what brings the next generation that much closer to achieving the goals of those founding documents.

I, for one, am going to quiz my children on just what they did (or didn't) learn today in school about the Constitution. If I'm not satisfied, then additional "homework" (literally... home work) will be required before anyone gets on a Facebook page or the Wii console.