The preamble is the introductory part of the constitution stating its purpose, aims, and justification. It states the goals, the objective of what follows in the actual Constitution. The Constitution itself lays out the rights of the individual and or the states. What the Federal Government can and can't do, what the states can't do and anything not stated is left to the states and or the people.
The preamble is just the introductory part of the Constitution. The actual constitution follows of what applies follows.
I think the impulse to trivialize the purposes and objectives of a large and defining document as just introductory fluff is a common, but seriously misguided, approach to the implementation of the undertaking. A different example that may be better suited to explain why has to do with an Act of Congress that I have had deep and long-term association with:
Community Forest Restoration Act, which resulted in the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program. I sat on the Technical Advisory Panel for four years, reviewing grant proposals - a week long ordeal to choose the 10-12 best projects out of some 40 proposals for funding.
During the first several years of the program, the TAP members were mostly people who had been active in the mission of forest ecosystem restoration for a decade, or more, and they (we) pretty much knew a good proposal when we saw one, but there still had to be a defensible rationale for our choices, or the "howls of the unfunded" would become intolerable. Gradually, the USFS employee in charge of the process massaged the decision process into a fairly lengthy checklist of sorts, and a cumbersome scoring protocol was devised, based upon a list of "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" commandments that were included in the body of the RFP. After about six years, the review and scoring process had become quite lifeless and unsatisfying, and proponents had adopted strategies that were most likely to get the boxes checked, and innovative projects that would actually solve problems in the world of restoration forestry were being largely ignored - reasons cited being that they were "risky", or the reviewers (increasingly not leaders in the field, as they had 'termed out') didn't understand what the proponents wanted to accomplish.
In the course of trying to come up with a way to get back to a better review and selection process, I realized that the TAP was not asking a single question that related to the purposes and objectives of the Act. The entire 'checklist' was about the restrictive covenants from three pages in, and the overarching question, "Will this advance the goals forest restoration", was never discussed.
My opinion is that this exact same situation exists with interpreting the U.S. Constitution. The Preamble... the statement of purpose, aims, and justification... is the most important section of the entire document. Without constantly refreshing ourselves with the goals, the enclosed rules are, "death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones", as
Walt Whitman once said.
