No day is more important to the United States of America than Independence Day, celebrated on the Fourth of July. It honors the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It proclaims to the world that the United States is a new sovereign nation, free of Great Britain, free for all people who come here in perpetuity.
The most important words in the Declaration of Independence are in the second paragraph. There is a reason they are at the beginning.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.”
Those few words sum up the divine source of our unalienable rights and our philosophy of government. These revolutionary words separating us from a statist Great Britain led to a bloody war. At the end of that war was the United States of America, the promissory note of the freest, most creative, productive, and richest nation in the history of mankind.
It is the first time that the end of slavery was enshrined in any Constitution. A war fought in the next century fulfilled that promise. 1776 was the beginning of the end of slavery.
The Declaration was not a set of laws. It was a promise of the principles of the United States. All men are equal and have the rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is the right of the people to govern.
These words helped abolish slavery in the United States. It was the Declaration that Lincoln insisted on using in his argument for abolishing what the great Southern statesman Henry Clay called “a foul blot upon our nation.”
In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Lincoln declared: There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…
THE BRILLIANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION
The Constitution, our guiding principles, made it extremely difficult to prevent the formation of a despotic regime. The states maintain power to prevent a king from taking power.
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The House of Representatives, representing local Congressional districts, brought the citizen as close to the seat of government as possible. The large states, with their larger number of delegates, could exert power over the smaller states. However, in the Senate the smaller states could exert power over the larger ones. In the Senate, little Rhode Island or Delaware has as much clout as California or New York.
This nation is unique and exceptional because of these values and laws. Other nations don’t have anything like this. Our nation was founded on principles.
Our Constitution is the oldest written Constitution still functioning. That is because it is a document of principles of values, and ideas that center on freedom. Ours is a nation of choice, ideas. Anyone in the world can join us to share our ideas. This is not a Constitution founded on blood and soil. That is not the proposition of this country. Freedom is the proposition.
Some complain that it’s too old and it’s time for a new Constitution. That isn’t true. We need to get back to it.
Everyone who comes here can fulfill the promise of their life in freedom. That’s what the Constitution means.
The next most important words are these:
“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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
— Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world”.
Our Founders were deeply flawed men but they were dedicated to the idea of America. The idea is of government built on freedom and ruled by the people. They were flawed but they pledged their “lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” for freedom.
Flawed men but brilliant, they established the structure for that government.
The House of Representatives, representing local Congressional districts, brought the citizen as close to the seat of government as possible. The large states, with their larger number of delegates, could exert power over the smaller states. However, in the Senate the smaller states could exert power over the larger ones. In the Senate, little Rhode Island or Delaware has as much clout as California or New York.
Our states are free and united in freedom.
I WILL DIE FOR THIS, WILL YOU?
The Declaration of Independence, which will remain for future generations of Americans the beacon of liberty, the upholder of our divine unalienable rights, the guardian of our independence. Its words must be written in the hearts and minds of our citizens, so that we never forget the price paid for our freedom … and the reasons why freedom is worth paying the price.
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