“...insure domestic Tranquility,...”
I had to look up the word “Tranquility”, because I was not entirely sure I understood the intent behind the words in the Constitution. I have always thought of tranquility as a peaceful rest, like a Sunday afternoon after church (I had a traditional Christian family). I remember, as a kid my mother used to read books to my siblings and I before bed. One of them was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little house on the Prairie”. In the book there was a part that talked about the (seemingly) extremes that they would go to to follow the commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” Exodus 20:8 NKJV (http://bible.com/114/exo.20.8.nkjv). In the book, they would make their meals on Saturday and absolutely NO work was done on Sunday. That’s how I used to feel about “tranquility”. A peaceful Sunday afternoon that was spent almost lazily around the house chatting and chuckling happily.
tran·quil·li·ty
noun \tran-ˈkwi-lə-tē, traŋ-\
Definition of TRANQUILLITY
: the quality or state of being tranquil <the tranquillity of the quiet countryside>
After looking this word up on Merriam-Webster’s dictionary online, I was given an entirely different perspective. The example is a quiet countryside. I can only speculate about the various images that anyone else imagines when they read that example, but words can not describe the beauty I see in that part of the Constitution. The founding fathers were worn out, tired of war, tired of debates, and all they wanted for themselves and for everyone else, was a nice peaceful rest. They wanted their nation to have the luxury of domestic tranquility. They understood that it would be necessary to fight wars in the future, but they wished so strongly to keep peace in the priorities of our nation, that they put Tranquility in the very foundation of the country.
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