Happy Independence day. The
241st anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
An important document for a number of reasons. It was, of course, a
declaration of war. Or more accurately an acknowledgment and
justification of the state of rebellion that existed. But it was more
than just a declaration of war. It was a brief explanation of
why we have government, what the purpose of government is, why the
then current government was unacceptable, and what should be done.
Right off the bat, it states
that governments are created (instituted is the term they use) by
mankind. They are an invention of man, not a gift from the creator. They
were created for a purpose -- protection of rights. Life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness among other rights. And they expressed the
radical idea that these fundamental rights were an integral part of
being human by the act of creation, not something that could be
granted or taken away on a whim. In the end, governments are only
legitimate if they protect fundamental rights with the consent of the governed. From there, they declare that
when a government is destructive of this end, the governed have the
right to change the government or to start over with a new one that
meets these requirements.
Then they submitted a list of
then current problems as they saw them. To put just a few of them in
more modern terms, the King and parliament removed many functions
from local control. They created an unbearable amount of bureaucracy. They stationed an armed force that was above the law
among us.They protected this armed force with
mock trials. They imposed taxes without consent. They deprived us of the
right of trial by jury. And the list goes on.
This declaration not only
justified the war for independence, it supplied a vision of what a
government should look like after the war. We won the war and started
to build on that vision. Got off to a rocky start with the Articles
of Confederation. Major progress with the Constitution in 1789 but
there were still rough edges like slavery. Civil war brought about
major changes to the character of our government. Some good, some
bad. There have been many additional changes brought on by the work
of activists, courts, the results of war, etc. that keep redefining
our government. On the one hand, we are still a great country that
has made remarkable progress towards that historic vision of better
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. More equal protection
regardless of race, color, creed, sex, gender, religion or national
origin. On the other hand, some of the grievances on that historic
document are with us today and need to be dealt with. The vision was
declared in 1776 but the work is not done. There is still a lot of
clean up, heavy lifting, and fine tuning needed today.
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