We the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.1

which idea is expressed in this excerpt from the constitution?

a. states are as responsible for the defense of the nation as the military is.
b. the constitution is a guiding document that will improve the country.
c. it is important to amend the constitution to keep it relevant.
d. average citizens cannot be trusted with political power.

Read the excerpt from eighty years and more. until i was sixteen years old, i was a faithful student in the johnstown academy with a class of boys. though i was the only girl in the higher classes of mathematics and the languages, yet, in our plays, all the girls and boys mingled freely together. in running races, sliding downhill, and snowballing, we made no [division] of gender. true, the boys would carry the school books and pull the sleighs up hill for their favorite girls, but equality was the general basis of our school relations. i dare say the boys did not make their snowballs quite so hard when pelting the girls, nor wash their faces with the same [forcefulness] as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of [favoritism]. which detail supports the central idea that stanton feels females and males were generally treated equally at johnstown academy? until i was sixteen years old, i was a faithful student . . i was the only girl in the higher classes of mathematics . . [t]here was no public evidence of [favoritism]. true, the boys would carry the school books . .