Independence Day
Maybe it is just me, but the recent unrest about the systemic racism still afflicting our country and the dearth of mass celebrations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, have inspired a more introspective view of Independence Day.
We don’t think enough about it, but we aren’t celebrating the day our country was founded, our flag adopted, our Constitution written, or even our independence won. We are celebrating the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Most of the Declaration is devoted to giving reasons why the colonies felt justified in dissolving our “political bands” with Great Britain. However, the reasons are given in a philosophical context that is remarkable. At a time when most countries were ruled by people who claimed to do it by divine right, or simply did it by force, our Declaration set out a statement of purpose and justification:
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Today we attack the members of the Constitutional Convention for being slave holders, for excluding women, for supporting genocide against native people. Maybe for them it was self-evident that “all men” actually meant “all white property-owning men,” but because they wrote and approved “all men” we have foundational grounds for working toward a fair and just society.
You know, after stating that we have unalienable rights and identifying “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as three of them, the Declaration says, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Everything after that is just working out the details.
Among those details, to me, right now: it makes sense that we should take down, modify, even destroy statues and monuments to men who led armies against the United States in support of slavery (I wrote about statues in a previous post). I find it a little more problematic to destroy or defile a statue that was created to honor some other achievement, but happens to portray a man who owned slaves or massacred Native Americans.
But on the Fourth of July we aren’t celebrating the men or their deeds, we are celebrating their words, their ideas.
All are equal.
All have unalienable rights.
Among the rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The purpose of governments is to secure the rights of the governed.
Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. If those problematic white men of privilege had not pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the ideals where would we be?
No country was ever founded on those ideals before, and they are ideals worth celebrating, and worth continuing to strive toward.
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