Guest Commentary: What the Constitution means to me

John Adams once wrote, “Be it remembered, however, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood (from A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765).”

Over two decades later, this quest for liberty would be the driving force behind the drafting of the United States Constitution.

I’ll be honest. I never really thought much about the Constitution when I was younger. I vaguely remember being asked in eighth grade to research the 19th Amendment, which primarily entailed my memorizing its words verbatim. It was always implied that I should care about the Constitution, but I found it hard to appreciate something I never truly understood. I spent my young life under the naive and unfortunate misconception that the Founding Fathers had simply earned and guaranteed my American rights, end of story.

That was until the 2016 presidential election. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of intolerance and vitriol I’d never understood existed with regard to pivotal issues facing our country. I watched YouTube videos in which seemingly civilized individuals screamed and gestured, but never once listened. I witnessed my friends refuse to associate with those with differing political opinions.

For the first time I understood what John Adams meant. Our founding fathers were a group of great thinkers who set aside their individual differences to create the masterfully designed government that is our United States. It was their sacrifices that allow me to live in a country where I’d spent most of my life taking for granted the freedoms their painstaking labors had secured and ensured for me. I came to realize that the privilege of self-governance afforded me by the Constitution came with great responsibility.

Thus, I was thrust into political action as I realized I needed to educate myself and take a stand for what I believed in. Watching the turmoil occurring around me, I was startled to discover that my lifestyle and rights are not as assured as I once believed. I watched two students from my school bitterly arguing about whether the Second Amendment should be repealed. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would beg the government to take away a right our ancestors fought so fervently to put in place. While I understood the climate of our world is always changing, I recognized that the rights granted to us by the Constitution were fought for with good reason. To say we should disregard or discard any of these would be to see the founders’ efforts die in vain.

It is my duty to champion the Constitution with its rich language and deep meaning. I must voice my appreciation for our founders and the life they have enabled me to pursue. Toward that cause, I would like to highlight a few of my Constitutional favorites. First, I appreciate the First Amendment, because it allows me to practice my faith, which is extremely important to me. Furthermore, I’ve been taught my entire life to respectfully speak my mind. The First Amendment offers me the luxury of complying with that demand, and I must admit I frequently and fervently practice this with regard to those things that matter to me.

The Second Amendment, the one that I listened to my peers verbally pummel each other over, has special significance to me. I’ll probably never own a gun. However, I believe it is incumbent upon each U.S. citizen to fight for the rights of all, not just those rights that apply to our own lives.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees my right to maintain my personal belongings with privacy, a right that doesn’t necessarily extend to my bedroom right now, because I have parents who care enough to wonder what I’m up to in there.

The Sixth Amendment relates to trials and rights of the accused. The application of this will become important to my future life, because I plan to become a forensic psychologist.

Moving past the Bill of Rights we find the 13th and 15th amendments that abolish slavery and provide the subsequent right of men of color to vote. This was a great wrong being righted.

Finally, we reach the 19th Amendment, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Without this amendment my essay wouldn’t matter, because my opinion wouldn’t count. Nor would this fine organization of esteemed Republican women exist.

I recognize and honor the sacrifices of the many women who survived beatings and starvation and imprisonment to secure our right to vote; and I look forward to the day in the near future when I’m able to join the millions of women who have changed the course of history through intelligent and informed participation in the election process.

And so I’ve come full circle from my uninformed and dispassionate eighth-grade childhood to my enthusiastic passage into civic responsibility. I owe my right to this liberty to a group of principled and highly cooperative men and women who believed the whole of their cause was more important than their individual goals. It is my hope that we will see a return to this collaborative and patriotic point of view.

I may never be called upon to make the sacrifices our Founding Fathers made when they placed their signatures upon a piece of parchment and changed the course of history. Still, I will jealously guard and promote the words meticulously written in that document in the hope that I will be able to say, like John Adams, “Let us presume, what is in fact true, that the spirit of liberty is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation.”

McKenna Rodi, a senior at Mountain Valley Academy, wrote this for the Intermountain Republican Women Federated’s Charlotte Mousel Scholarship Essay Contest. She placed first and received a $1,500 scholarship, which she will put toward attending University of California, Los Angeles in the fall.