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Advanced English 《高级英语》（第三版）第一册主编：张汉熙外语教学与研究出版社

Lesson 9“A More Perfect Union” (Part I) by Barack Obama

Teaching Points • I. Background information • II. Introduction to the speech • III. Language points • IV. Text analysis • V. Questions for discussion

I. Background Information • The author: Barak Obama • The Constitutional Convention • The issue of slavery • The Jeremiah Wright Controversy • YouTube

1. The author: Barak Obama • Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004.

His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. In October 2009, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and the Budget Control Act of 2011.

In foreign policy, he ended the war in Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered US involvement in the 2011 Libya military intervention, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In April 2011, Obama declared his intention to seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election.

2. The Constitutional Convention: Planning the United States Constitution, 1987 -- 1789 • In 1787 state legislatures elected delegates to the Constitutional Convention, which drafted a plan for a new federal government. The new Constitution included a number of important compromises. Ratification by the states during 1787 – 1789 was difficult and controversial. As a condition for ratification, several states demanded that a bill of rights be added.

Twelve state legislatures sent 55 delegates to meet at a convention in Philadelphia during the sultry summer of 1787. It was generally expected that the convention would revise the Articles of Confederation. Although representing different states and diverse interests, these delegates were similar in several respects. All were white males, most owned considerable property, and a large number owned slaves. Many were planters or large-scale commercial farmer, while others were wealthy merchants. Some were both. A number practiced law. Almost all were politicians with much experience in government.

At the convention, the delegates sought to protect their own property interests, but they also showed a remarkable capacity for larger issues. They understood that future prosperity both for themselves and for the country as a whole required boldness, a grand vision, and a willingness to sacrifice petty personal concerns to large, national needs.

Above all, they wanted to create a national government that would last. If the new government succeeded, the failure of the Confederation would be overlooked. However, if the new government failed, most Americans would conclude that a strong continental government based upon republican principles was impossible. The country then would either become a centralized despotism or quickly disintegrate into a collection of warring states.

George Washington chaired the convention, and at crucial moments he acted to resolve angry disputes. An old and ill Benjamin Franking of New York constantly pushed for a stronger new government, while two Virginians, George Mason and James Madison, continually drew upon political experience in their home state. The prominent leaders were missing. Ambassadors John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were, respectively, in London and Paris.

The Constitution was an extraordinarily clever political document. It ingeniously set forth a basic framework for government that kept power divided among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. At every turn, checks and balances prevented hasty action or the aggrandizement of power by any single branch.

To become law, a bill had to pass both the House and Senate and then be signed by the president. However, the president’s veto could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress. The president appointed the cabinet and all judges, but the Senate had to approve the appointments. Federal judges were independent because they served for life, but judges and the president could be removed from office by Congress using the impeachment process. The president negotiated all treaties, but they had to be ratified by the Senate.

The Constitution also promised to settle the decade’s economic problems. The new government would have the sole right to coin money, interstate tariffs would be prohibited, and an overseas tariff would help protect American manufactures. At the same time, the new federal court system offered merchants engaged in interstate commerce a practical way to resolve disputes that crossed state lines.

The document was written broadly, so that it could evolve with the country. Basic rules were stated emphatically, but specific details were left to later generations of Americans to debate and negotiate in the new political arena. Frequently amended and constantly reinterpreted in the light of changing political and economic conditions, the United States Constitution is today the world’s oldest basic government document. (From A Concise History by W. J. Rorabaugh & Donald T. Critchlow)

3. The issue of slavery • Throughout American history the issue is of race has never been far removed from politics. It certainly was present in Philadelphia, despite some delegate’s best efforts to prevent a regional disagreement on slavery from thwarting the purpose of the convention. But how could delegates construct a government based on popular sovereignty and inalienable rights without addressing the fact that one-sixth of Americans were in bondage? They could not. Slavery figured importantly in many delegates’ private calculations, especially those of the southern delegates. At several junctures, it broke to the surface.

The first effort to grapple with slavery was the most acrimonious and threatening. How should slaves be counted in allocating congressional representatives to the states? Madison had persuaded delegates to postpone this issue until they had finalized the design of the new Congress, but the issue soon loomed again. Trying to maximize their representation in the population-based House of representative, southern delegates insisted that slaves were undeniably people and should be included fully in any population count to determine representation. Northerners resisted that attempted power grab by arguing that since slaves did not enjoy the freedom to act as autonomous citizens, they should not be counted at all.

In the end each side accepted a formula worked out under the Articles of Confederation that assigned states their financial obligations to the national government. Accordingly, the Constitution apportioned each state seats in the House of Representatives based on population totals in which each slave would count as three-fifths of a citizen.

Later in the convention some southern delegates insisted on two guarantees for their “peculiar institution” as conditions for remaining at the convention and endorsing the Constitution in the ratification debates. One was the unrestricted right to continue importing slaves. The delegates from northern states, most of which had outlawed slavery, preferred to leave the issue to some future government.

But in the end they conceded by writing into the Constitution a ban on regulation of the slave trade until 1808. (A total ban on slave imports went into effect on January 1, 1808.) Late in the convention southerners introduced the Constitution’s second slavery protection clause. It required northern states to return runaway slaves to their maters. After some delegates first resisted and then softened the language of the clause, the proposal passé.

Southern intransigence paid off handsomely: Slavery was sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution. Why did the delegations from the more numerous northern states cave in to the southerners? Two explanations are possible – and both are probably true. First, the handling of the slavery issue was likely another instance of intense private interests prevailing over more diffuse notions of the public goods. Reporting to Jefferson in Paris, Madison wrote that “South Carolina and Georgia were inflexible on the point of slaves,” implying that without the slave traded and fugitive provisions they would not have endorsed the Constitution.

The second explanation stems from the economic interests driving some northern delegations. New England delegates came to Philadelphia largely out of their desire to strengthen the nation’s commercial policies at home and abroad. Fearful that its agricultural exports to Europe might be taxed and regulated, the South had opposed giving the national government such authority except with the consent of two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress. Such majorities, however, would presumably have given the South a veto over any objectionable policy.

But if the national government insisted, as in time it did, that a substantial share of exports must travel on U.S. ships, the Northeast with its ports and shipping companies would gain financially at the expense of the southern producers. So in the end, in a classic logroll, New England and the South accommodated each other’s dominant economic interests: Article I, Section 9, protects the importation of slaves and Article IV, Section 2, requires the return of fugitive slaves; Article I, Section 8, allows the national government to regulate commerce and tax imports.

In his detailed minutes of the proceedings, Madison recorded the circumlocutions of delegates from both regions who took the floor to seal their deal. His footnotes further clarify the political arguments behind these formal agreements. (From The Logic of American Politics by Samuel Kernell & Gary C. Janobson)

4. The Jeremiah Wright Controversy • The Jeremiah Wright Controversy is an American political issue that that gained national attention in March 2008 when ABC News, after reviewing dozens of U.S. 2008 Presidential Election candidate Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, excerpted parts which were subject to intense media scrutiny.

Wright is a retired senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and former pastor of the U.S President Barack Obama. Obama denounced the statements in question, but after critics continued to press the issue of his relationship with Wright he gave a speech titled “A More Perfect Union,” in which he sought to place Dr. Wright’s comments in a historical and sociological context. In the speech, Obama again denounced Wright’s remarks, but did not disown him as a person.

5. YouTube YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share video. YouTube是世界上最大的视频分享网站，早期公司总部位于加利福尼亚州的比萨店和日本餐馆，让用户下载、观看及分享影片或短片。2005年2月，由三名PayPal的前任员工所创站，网站的名称和标志皆是自早期电视所使用的阴极射线管发想而成。2006年11月，Google公司以16.5亿美元收购了YouTube，并把其当做一间子公司来经营。

II. Introduction Obama’s address “A More Perfect Union” was delivered on March 18, 2008, during his campaign for presidency. The speech was written against a rather complex background, as a response to the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Reverend Wright was the pastor or Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and also a participant in Obama’s campaign.

In March 2008, ABC News released a story examining the sermons of Reverend Wright in which he denounced the United States and accuse the government of crimes against people of color. Wright had said, among other things, “God damn America” for its racism and “for killing innocent people.” Before this Obama had begun to distance himself from his pastor and right after the controversy Obama again denounced Wright’s offending remarks. But Obama felt he should more sufficiently address and explain the context of his relationship with the Reverend. Therefore, he wrote the speech that became “A More Perfect Union.” This speech received general positive response, and is regarded by some as one of the biggest events in his campaign, a speech which helped him win the election.

III. Language points 1. The title: A More Perfect Union The title is taken form the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. The preamble runs like this: We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

When the founding fathers wrote “to form a more perfect Union” they meant the U.S. established on the constitution would be a better state than those in the Old World (Europe). They were following the call of building “a City on the Hill.” But when Barak Obama used the phrase, the implication was that the current union was far from being perfect and it was the task of the American people to make it more perfect, to realize the goal set out in the constitution.

2. Two hundred and twenty-one years ago … improbable experiment in democracy. (Para. 2) 1) This sentence is modeled on the beginning of the “Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln. The address began with “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

2) “improbable experiment” In American history and American government, many scholars hold that the writing and implementation of the Constitution is an experiment because it was the first written document initiating the beginning of the end of the concept of the divine right of kings. At that time the U.S. was small and weak. No one could be sure if it would survive or the experiment could succeed. Therefore you have “improbable experiment.”

3. Farmers and scholars…that lasted through the spring of 1787. (Para. 2) 1) traveled across the ocean: referring to the early settles, the Puritans who sailed across the Atlantic ocean 2) make real their declaration of independence: turned the concepts embodied in the Declaration of Independence into articles in the Constitution

3) that lasted through the spring of 1787: The Constitutional Convention met in the Philadelphia State House from May 25 to September 17, 1787; the Convention was attended by 55 delegates from 12 states. (Rhode Island declined to send delegates to the convention.)

4. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. (Para. 3) After much, sometimes heated, debate, the Constitution was finally adopted by the convention. Of the 55 delegates, only 39 signed. The convention provided that the new Constitution would go into effect when ratifying conventions nine of the thirteen states had approved it.

In discussion, one issue that arose was the apportioning of seats in the House of Representatives according to population total when allotting Congressional seats but left out in determining liability for direct taxation. The Northern States wanted slaves excluded from representation, since they were a species of property. The result was a compromise, the “three-fifths” clause, whereby a slave was counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of both representation and direct taxation.

When Obama said the document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished he meant the Constitution was finally adopted by the convention and in June 1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution and later that year Virginia and New Yeak also ratified the Constitution and it went into effect. But since the problem of slavery was not solved, the process did not end until the Civil War and the enactment of Constitutional Amendments 14 (1868) and 15 (1870).

5. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery … to future generations. (Para. 3) 1) original sin: According to the Bible, the sin of having eaten the forbidden fruit committed by Adam and Eve, is traditionally viewed as transmitted in its essential guilt and consequent penalties from Adam as head of the human race to all unredeemed humanity. 原罪

2) During the War of Independence, the British announced that freedom would be given to those slaves who fought for the Crown, and during the war about 100,000 slaves left their maters and went over to the British side. Seventeen of the slaves owned by George Washington also deserted him and fled to the British side. So the slave issue was a serious issue at the Constitutional Convention.

In the end, the Constitution in Article One Section Two Point 3 states that Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.

And in Article One Section Nine Point 1, the Constitution says “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight …” As a result, South Carolina and Georgia imported 90,000 new slaves in the 20 years before 1808.

6. What would be needed … and the reality of their time (Para. 5) Only through struggles in different forms did generation after generation of Americans succeed in bringing the rights promised in the Constitution to people of different sex, color or belief. 1) who were willing to do their part: Not all Americans in different periods of American history would struggle for this goal, only some who had the awareness and determination would take part in the struggle. This is exemplified by the Civil Rights Movement and the feminist movement.

2) to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time: This is an important concept. Many Americans believe the founding fathers had worked out an ideal model and the current problems and drawbacks exist because Americana have not followed the guidance of the founding fathers. All they need to do is to go back to the founding principles.

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