Before there was our present day Constitution there was the Articles of Confederation, which basically represented our first constitution, but the articles lacked the ability to take the now thirteen states and truly unite them under one body politic, essentially necessary in order to appropriately deal with the world at large, for trade, for debt, for just about everything, and hence there was a felt the need, as well as an urgency, that a central government, with limited and delegated powers, be created, which was done, with the final state ratifying our governing Constitution accomplished n 1790.
The Constitution, itself, was controversial, full of vigorous debates, with some adamantly opposed to a strong central government, and others recognizing the need for such, in which, the slippery slope that all wished to avoid, was any sort of return to the tyranny that a bloody independence war had been fought for. One of the most important measures created for the people, was the creation of the Bill of Rights to our Constitution, in which the rights of the people, were clearly written into that Constitution. These rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, protection of the rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as the fact that the rights and powers not specifically enumerated or delegated would be retained by the people or the states, all represented to the people the essential message as distilled by President Lincoln, that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
It is fundamental to remember that our Declaration of Independence, our raison d'être, recognized that each of us is gifted inalienably with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is those very gifts, that created the common sense to declare and to fight for our independence from Great Britain. This means that any government, so created, by these United States, in order for it to still be considered both legitimate and in keeping with the harmony of our Declaration of Independence, must as a matter of course, do nothing to steal these very inalienable rights from the people. Further to the point, the Constitution is not really set forth as a document for the people to bow down and pay obeisance to, but rather clearly represents a document that asserts the people's inalienable rights, their basic freedoms and protections, and that the only legitimate national government is the one that truly represents all of the people, with equality, fairness, and justice for all.
Unfortunately, not too surprisingly, the national government, has gotten more powerful, more intrusive, more controlling, more taxing, and more tyrannical, over the ages, so that at the present day, many people rightly fear this government's power for rather than the people being the masters of their own fate, this inalienable power has been wrested from the people's hands, their God-given choices nullified, and too often, the government asserts its powers against the people in a concerted and concentrated force to exact whatever they so desire from them.
We now live in a bifurcated country, in which, our masters and their cohorts do as they please, with the vast majority of citizens, monitored, categorized and watched, in which this government tells the people that this is necessary for their protection, but in reality, done so as to benefit the avarice of the elite, so that our inalienable rights and our Constitution guarantees, are trampled upon by the very government, established for our benefit.