What does “of the people, by the people, for the people” mean?

The Gadsden Flag was named after American general and politician Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), who designed it in 1775 during the American Revolution. It was used by the Continental Marines and is often used in the United States by conservatives as a symbol for limited government.

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By Carolyn Yeager

IT SURE DOESN'T MEAN of, by and for Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Who are 'the people' that this country exists for? Those who came to Washington DC on January 6 in the hundreds of thousands to express their support for their president Donald J. Trump are some of those people. But all we hear, read or see since Jan. 6 is that Donald Trump is a madman, a would-be dictator who must be driven from office immediately before he carries out any more mad adventures, and these hundreds of thousands of 'the people' are deluded domestic terrorists who must now be more strongly surveilled, rebuked and as many as possible put in prison.

I woke up very early this Monday morning and the words “of the people, by the people, for the people” came into my mind and wouldn't leave. I thought these words were from the United States Constitution, and felt so intensely the importance of this Constitution that has always been under attack, but never so much as now. No other people in the world has the kind of freedoms our Constitution gives to us. To lose such a treasure would be a tragedy beyond comprehension, yet we are very close to doing just that.

It's shocking. Yet it's really happening.

I looked the words up and found they were not in the Constitution, but came from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that in my day we all had to memorize around about our Freshman or Sophomore year in high school. I found that patriot Daniel Webster said in a speech to the Senate in 1830:

"...It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's Government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition or dispute their authority."

In an 1850 speech, Theodore Parker, an American preacher and social reformer, declared:

"...There is what I call the American idea...This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; [...] for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom..."

President Abraham Lincoln used it in his Gettysburg address in November 1863:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Our constitution is what guarentees our government of the people and for the people,  the only thing that has protected our free speech and our free ownership of guns with which to defend ourselves. Naturally those who want to create supra-national authoritarian control world-wide see it as a barrier against their goal that they will dismantle if they can. I understand better now why it is our highest duty to protect our constitution and keep it intact and in place. That's what the Americans who went to Washington DC on January 6 were doing, and what they did should be respected. Nancy Pelosi should not be allowed to demean and criminalize those people and their intentions.

To make war on your own people is Stalinism. Shutting down speech is Stalinism. We have to remember when, in the 1940's, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were chummy with Josef Stalin. Yes, they sincerely were, there's no denying it. 'Uncle Joe,' FDR called this mass murderer affectionately. Adolf Hitler was not a mass murderer in truth, but Josef Stalin certainly was. Our countries were heavily infiltrated with Stalin admirers during and after that war. That is the enemy within we are still suffering from.

Donald Trump told the massive crowd on Jan. 6: “"If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore."  He's been condemned for that but he's right. Are we supposed to lose our country just so we can prove we're non-violent? That's a trap. No one wants violence, but we don't want to lose our country and our Constitution either. We need to stand firm at this time. Losing on this issue is simply not an option. I can't do much  but I support whatever plans are in the works for the coming days and weeks. I will remain a Trump supporter. 

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Please read this from a rally attendee: https://www.nrtoday.com/news/national/national_politics/glide-resident-saw-another-side-of-protests-in-washington-d-c/article_7baa648f-b12f-52e4-bd88-e6b97d9d6919.html