And so, this past Monday, 17 September 2007, became Citizenship Day. We have just finished Constitution Week as a time for us to pay homage to our forefathers who must have been the most visionary of men to establish a Constitution that would stand the changing times from the 18th century to the twenty-first. Most of us seldom give the Constitution of the United States a second thought. We simply live under its wings of protection; it is a living document and affects our lives every hour of every day.

The birthing of our constitution did not come easily. Old friends were made enemies and it was approached with more prayer than any other document in the history of America. An oppressive tyranny had been overthrown to make place for this Republic. A shaky Confederation failed because it lacked the cohesiveness to last. Many feared the new establishing document. Men of importance were still referred to as "His Excellency," Some expected George the III would simply be replaced by George I. Some in high places urged the President to accept a throne instead of a gavel.

When he refused, Europeans could not believe a man would turn down a kingdom. Certainly there were lesser men who would have jumped at the chance. We can all thank God that George Washington was not such a man.

Had the Constitution been a sacred document to be put away, guarded with sanctimonious ardor, not to be touched or changed regardless of the changing world, it would have died long ago. Washington or Jefferson, even the wisdom of Franklin, could not have envisioned the progress of man in the 20th century as our base of knowledge doubled and redoubled in the space of just a hundred years.

Imagine George Washington with a cell phone or Franklin boarding a supersonic jet for his trip to serve as ambassador to France. Who could have imagined in 1781 that a day would come when an American stepped onto the surface of the moon? We have come from the most primitive of agricultural life to the information age and still the Constitution stands as a guiding light to the Republic it established. The Constitution is worth fighting for. It has stood not by luck or neglect but by the blood of patriots from Breed's Hill in Massachusetts to Baghdad, Iraq.

In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt made his famous Four Freedoms speech. We stood on the precipice of a great world war, a war that would claim more lives than all the previous wars of the world; Rows of white crosses would make lasting memorials to the courage and determination of America to give the world a chance for freedom. The President said: