Now here's the fun part, in case you thought it wasn't fun enough already:
We're all wrong -- and I knew this going into this last flurry. In fact I was planning to advance the first seven words to make the whole point when you did for me, c-man. But here's the third act:
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_pre.html
Quote:
The newly minted document began with a grand flourish - the Preamble, the Constitution's r'aison d'etre. It holds in its words the hopes and dreams of the delegates to the convention, a justification for what they had done. Its words are familiar to us today, but because of time and context, the words are not always easy to follow. The remainder of this Topic Page will examine each sentence in the Preamble and explain it for today's audience.
We the People of the United States
The Framers were an elite group - among the best and brightest America had to offer at the time. But they knew that they were trying to forge a nation made up not of an elite, but of the common man. Without the approval of the common man, they feared revolution. This first part of the Preamble speaks to the common man. It puts into writing, as clear as day, the notion that the people were creating this Constitution. It was not handed down by a god or by a king - it was created by the people.
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"We the People" -- always intended to reinforce the idea that the government is by the people, for the people. Never intended to make a broad statement about who they indicated.
That was the original intent.
Yet here we sit, running two totally different "obvious" interpretations and arguing over which of our wrong two takes on it are "correct".
You can see why we wound up with a system of courts and justice through case law. It's quite clear, through this thread, that an "obvious" interpretation is not obvious at all; that Radar has, as he always does, substituted HIS wrong interpretation as "obvious".
After all this, it's a clear example that somebody needs to have the ultimate say, and gosh just maybe it should be somebody who has actually studied the case law for years instead of a self-anointed expert who doesn't know or care about the actual, complete meanings of the first seven words of his most prized document.