[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 116 (Thursday, September 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10103-S10104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OUR CONSTITUTION

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the importance of our 
Constitution. In Delaware, we are reminded of that every year, at least 
once a year, on December 7, because that is Delaware Day. In Delaware, 
we celebrate on December 7, the day in 1787 when Delaware became the 
first State to ratify the Constitution. For one whole week, Delaware 
was the entire United States of America. After a week or so, we opened 
it up and let other States in, including South Carolina. For the most 
part, we have been pleased with the way things turned out.
  This year, Constitution Day is going to be commemorated not just in 
Delaware on December 7 but across the country on September 17. That 
will be Saturday. That is actually the day the Constitution was 
apparently signed back in 1787, up in Philadelphia.
  If you visit the Senate today and all this week and you come into one 
of the galleries, if you walk in, they will give you a copy of the 
Constitution. Today I was bringing in some visitors, from Dover, DE, 
and I was given a copy of the Constitution with the amendments thereto. 
I was reminded that this commemoration of our Constitution for this 
Saturday was made possible by one of our colleagues in the Senate, 
Robert Byrd, who carries with him every day a copy of the Constitution 
a little bit smaller than this one. You have probably seen it, Mr. 
President. He pulls it out every now and then and waves it in our faces 
to remind us what it is all about. It is because of his love, really 
devotion, to the Constitution that we will be having a special 
commemoration on Saturday. I thank Senator Byrd for doing that.
  I am a Delawarean who treasures what our Constitution does. It is the 
basic law of our land, the law on which all the other laws are built. 
The Constitution which is becoming the longest lived Constitution in 
the history of the world and the Constitution most replicated by every 
nation on Earth is the one we celebrate this Saturday.
  I wish to take a couple of moments to share and remind us again how 
the Constitution is introduced. It starts off--many of us know these 
words. In fact, many of us as schoolchildren, and our children as well, 
had to learn the preamble to the Constitution, which reads as follows:

       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.

  ``We the people,'' those three words encapsulate the very essence of 
what makes America so wonderful. By presenting a united front, our 
Founding Fathers told the world that they stood together when creating 
this great country. I believe we need to recapture their spirit of 
reconciliation and to focus our energies on healing the rift that has 
developed in our current political climate, a rift that goes back to 
the beginning of this administration, the previous administration, and, 
frankly, for some time before that.
  We have seen how powerful America can be when all of our citizens 
unite to focus on a common goal. During this upcoming weekend, 
Saturday, September 17, I urge all Americans--not just my children who 
are in high school; not just other schoolchildren, but I urge all 
Americans from all walks of life to pause and contemplate principles 
that form the cornerstone of this great democracy of ours. By 
understanding our past, I believe we can navigate toward a better 
future and truly honor the philosophy and spirit of our Founding 
Fathers.

  The first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of 
Rights. They lay out some of the liberties that we take for granted, 
but people in other places around the world would love to have these 
liberties. They do not and maybe they never will. I hope they will.
  But our Constitution has, among other liberties, the freedom to bear 
arms. It has the right to say what is on our mind. In fact, there are 
newspapers, television stations, our radio stations--all of us enjoy 
freedom of speech. People can vote for whomever they want. If they like 
the job we are doing, they can reelect us; if they don't, they can 
throw us out and put somebody else in these seats. They can run for the 
job themselves.
  They have a right to a jury by their peers. They have a right to be 
protected from unlawful searches without an order of a judge. There are 
all kinds of protections in our Constitution.
  There is one given a little attention here lately, given a decision 
by a district court judge out in California. The question it raises is 
in the press of late, in the last 24 or 48 hours--again, I might add--
the question of whether or not the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, 
where we say ``one nation under God,'' is indeed constitutional.
  I would have us go back to the beginning of our Nation's history, 
when we were born as a nation. I would have us remember, when the first 
President, George Washington, was sworn into office and they finished 
the ceremony--I think it was in New York City--they didn't break up and 
go off to a bunch of inaugural balls. As I recall, they went to church.
  Several years before that when they were up in Philadelphia and were 
trying to hammer out the Constitution itself, whenever they got into an 
especially difficult place, they would sometimes call a halt to what 
they were doing and pray about it. They actually began a lot of their 
sessions with prayers, much as we begin our session in the Senate and 
over at the House of Representatives.
  The folks who gathered up in Philadelphia all those years ago did not 
want to have a State religion. They didn't want to have a ``Church of 
America.'' They didn't want to have our version of the Church of 
England. They wrote that in the Constitution, literally in the first 
amendment. This is the way the first amendment starts:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion.

  If we go over the copy of the Constitution that we shared with the 
folks coming into the Senate today as visitors, we read the language 
alongside the raw language of the amendment and it says these words:

       The first amendment protects religious freedom by 
     prohibiting the establishment of an official or exclusive 
     church or sect.

  I am not a lawyer, certainly not a constitutional lawyer. But I think 
I

[[Page S10104]]

can read. When I read literally the words of the Constitution, I 
believe what our Founding Fathers were trying to do is to make sure we 
don't establish in this country a church that somehow is sanctioned by 
the Government. They just didn't want to go there. Seeing what happened 
in some other countries, they didn't want to have any part of that.
  Having said that, our Founding Fathers were a religious people. They 
were people of faith, and they drew on their faith, frankly, in drawing 
up this document and trying to resolve their differences in reaching 
the core on this Constitution.
  The Pledge of Allegiance, I don't believe, existed when those folks 
were working on the Constitution. In fact, the words ``under God'' were 
only added, I believe, in 1954, some 51 years ago. I would ask, given 
the reliance on faith and people calling on their faith in 1787 when 
drafting the Constitution, how would they feel about a Pledge of 
Allegiance that said, ``one nation under God''? My guess is they would 
feel pretty good about it. Rather than saying that we ought to strike 
that language ``under God,'' they would probably say we ought to keep 
that in, and I would have to agree with them.
  We will hear more about this issue going forward, I am sure. 
Hopefully, when we do, we will think back not just about the 
Constitution and what the words actually say in the first amendment, 
but we will also think back to the way people comported themselves and 
how they drew on their faith in 1787 as they wrestled with drafting 
this document and coming to consensus on this document. I think they 
would want the words ``one nation, under God'' to be in the Pledge of 
Allegiance if we were to have one.
  We have all said it hundreds, probably thousands, of times. I think 
we got it right in 1954, and I think we ought to leave it that way.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). The Senator from South Carolina.

                          ____________________