The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?

Why this is the answer

We the People. Those three words open the Preamble, the single sentence that comes before Article I and explains why the Constitution was written. The rest of the sentence names six goals: to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for the present generation and those who come after. It closes by saying that the people ordain and establish the Constitution. The grammar carries the idea the question is testing. In that sentence the people are the ones who act, and the Constitution is the thing they create. Read that way, the government exists because the people set it up, it works for them, and its authority comes from them. USCIS gives this principle a name, popular sovereignty, and describes the people as the highest power in the country. They use that power through elections: USCIS study materials explain that Americans are not governed by a king or a queen and instead govern themselves by electing representatives to local, state and national office. That is self-government in its plainest form. Because the question already tells you the theme, the answer has to name who governs, and only the three words count. A frequent mix-up is reaching for another famous opening line, especially "We hold these truths to be self-evident." That phrase starts the best-known passage of the Declaration of Independence, which is a separate document. We the People opens the Constitution, the plan for the government itself. Keeping the two documents apart by their first words is a small habit that pays off on several other questions about founding documents too. If the phrase slips away under pressure, think about who the Preamble names first, ahead of every branch, office and state, and the words come back with it.