The Importance of Heritage

By: Sam Hendrickson, Editor

The modern word "heritage" descends from Middle English, deriving out of the Anglo-French word "heritatre" meaning "to inherit". The word "heritatre" comes from the Latin word "heridatare" meaning "to leave an inheritance". Through the definitions of these two antiquated words, we find the double pronged meaning of heritage. Heritage is what we inherit, and what we leave behind. Our heritage is like matter, we came from it, it cannot be destroyed, and we will leave something behind to contribute to its flow. All heritage has good to inherit and pass on, as well as negative attributes to be corrected, sorted out, and rectified. Our duty is to uphold the good of our inheritance and leave behind our own good, both as people, and as a nation.   “To secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity” reads the preamble to the Constitution. We are the posterity the preamble spoke of. In the United States our inheritance is the acceptance of the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights.We inherited the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Law of the Land, so it is our duty to uphold their values, to improve their integrity, and to leave behind an inheritance of  a more perfect union. We have inherited avenues to uphold these principles through freedom of speech and petition, as well as our freedom to participate in the government. We have inherited the blessings of liberty, and used our rights and duty to further secure them for ourselves and our posterity through amendments and further legislation such as the Bill of Rights, the 14th amendment, the 19th amendment, and the Civil Rights Act, just to name a few examples. None of this would be possible without the supporting  heritage of the individuals who make up the United States. The posterity that the founders spoke of was not simply their own. It was the posterity of all who came to this land under the Constitution. The vast majority of  United States citizens descend from those who came  looking for a better life. It would be impossible to find a United States citizen who is exclusively a descendant of the founding generation. People of all backgrounds have come to find a new beginning in the United States. In order for our nation to have a successful future, we must have an upstanding and civil populous. Our duty is to respect the courage and sacrifices that our ancestors have made as well as the culture that has preserved them, and to improve upon our own lives that we may leave behind a legacy to preserve our individual posterity, which in turn contributes  to the posterity of our nation.    When the people fail, the nation fails, and if we cast out the legacy of our forefathers and trade it for a life that fails our future generations, we fail the nation and the vision of the founding fathers.