Toward a more perfect union

Toward a more perfect union is a phrase used in American political discourse. It is a slight rephrasing of the second clause of the Preamble to the United States Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union." The phrase nods to the ideology of American exceptionalism and is used rhetorically to convey an idea that the United States remains an unfinished work-in-progress and that achieving the lofty goals espoused by the American founding documents demands constant inputs of both reflection and labor. According to one cultural history of the country's pre-revolutionary era, ""On the way toward declaring independence, Americans saw themselves as a separate people in the process of birth...Amidst all their bustle of practicality (they formed congresses, produced documents articulating their rights and grievances, established importation and exportation embargoes), they also took measures to alleviate internal tensions and to strengthen themselves as a people.""

U.S. Congressman John Lewis and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy coauthored a column in 2015 that included the assertion, "Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to move this nation toward a more perfect union." In this sense "toward a more perfect union" is also not dissimilar to a "growth mindset" or an athlete's training regimen, in which errors, flaws or crises are viewed as opportunities for reassessment and retraining. A kind of community-oriented striving was recommended in "Toward a more perfect union" article written by a U.S. Army general about the U.S. civil-military dynamic that urged "there are urgent demands for professionals of every calling to return home, to dabble less, to give the most thoughtful and considered attention to their own responsibilities." A similarly titled article published in a Duke University law journal asked, "stakeholders in the justice system should reflect on our successes and failures along the continuum for equal justice, equal access, equal opportunity, and full inclusion." In the wake of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, a Pennsylvania college professor exhorted, by way of a blog post entitled "Toward a more perfect union," that "We must learn all we can from recent events — as object lessons to strengthen our nation and our collective relationships to it. Let us strive together to become the nation of Walt Whitman's dreams:

"America" Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chair'd in the adamant of Time."

A 20th-century American nationalist poet, Langston Hughes, also lyrically addressed the gap between the promise and the progress (thus far) in a poem called "Let America Be America Again", for which the chorus is:

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!

In some cases, "toward a more perfect union" is used counterrevolutionarily as an apologetic for incrementalism, which has resulted in a society where "racial and gender inequality persist."