West Virginia Students Celebrate Constitution Day Posted:
September 16, 2009 By State Superintendent of Schools Steve
Paine In January, we heard a new president take the Oath of
Office swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States of America.” This oath is
specified in the Constitution itself. How many of us have really
listened to those words and wondered why the president swears to
protect and defend a piece of paper, our Constitution, not our
country? Our founding fathers suffered under the rule of kings.
Our founders had the revolutionary idea to put their faith in
the people, not in a king. They wrote down the commitments and
rules that outlined how they agreed to live together into the
Constitution and signed their names to it on Sept. 17, 1787. Who
could know that this brief document, which had been hammered out
by a committee of just five men, would change world history and
become a blueprint for democracy across the globe? Today, the
level of knowledge Americans have