A More Perfect Union

Not a perfect union, a more perfect one. The phrase concedes, in the founding's own opening breath, that the work is unfinished and the thing is improvable. It is a comparative, not a superlative, and the difference is the whole argument. The country is not a finished object to be preserved unchanged but a project to be carried further. The republic was inherited, and it requires maintenance. The Preamble said so first.