What We Celebrate When We Celebrate the Fourth of July

The United States severed its ties with England on July 2^nd, 1776. We celebrate July 4^th as a national birthday because that is the date at the top of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration announces that we at not Englishmen anymore, which was important at the time. It states what we in fact are, which has been important ever since. It seems like a good moment to revisit that.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

That magnificent first sentence squeezes centuries of political theory, if not a couple millennia, into a handful of phrases. Notice the phrases "in the course of human events," and "among the powers of the earth". The American founding owed a lot to the religious foundations of the culture. A lot of American rhetoric was pronounced from the pulpit. It is from Christianity more than anywhere else that the Founding generation learned the key moral ideas expressed in the Declaration. Nonetheless, the founding was a secular event. It was the result of human deliberation.

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.

The second sentence establishes a political logic. All men are, by definition, endowed with inalienable rights. The logic inescapably includes all human beings. Those who want to defend slavery or see women as property or, I might add, other things, are compelled to deny it. This is a basic moral principle. It is operative between two persons on an island.

Next, the Declaration states four basic political principles.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here we have two fundamental principles by which every human government may be judged. If a government fails to protect natural rights, either by ineffectiveness or because of some tyrannical impulse, or if it fails to derive its authority from the consent of the governed, it forfeits its authority. That neatly expresses the idea of liberal democracy.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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 shown 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.

When a government fails the first two tests, the people have the right to replace it with another. We did that in 1776 and again in 1787-89. But it's not a good idea to do it unless you really have to. Revolutions are about as dangerous a business as ever human beings engage in. That is the final principle, the principle of prudence.

Not a bad piece of work, that. It is good to celebrate it at least once a year. Happy Fourth of July!

Comments

[larry kurtz]

Oh, and thank you, Lord, for bringing 'Patriot Act' and 'extraordinary rendition' to our revolutionary vocabulary.

Amen.

[Ken Blanchard]

Thank Obama.

[Bill Fleming]

I think part of the idea with the Constitution was to build in mechanism whereby revolution could be avoided by adding to and altering and clarifying the original, fairly organic document. Are you familiar with Larry Sabato's book and website, KB? If so what do you think of it? If no, here's a link:

http://www.amoreperfectconstitution.com/a_more_perfect_constitution.htm

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: I concur in part. Most of the flexibility in the Constitution is provided by the general nature of the power distribution. The Amendment process has been most successful where it has worked to enlarge the franchise or excise some evil like slavery.

I am familiar with Sabato as an analyst of political action, but I do not know his argument for constitutional reform. I am opposed to the latter on principle. Almost everyone who wants to amend the Constitution really wants to codify their own political preferences. The idea of a balanced budget amendment is a case in point.

[penny auction]

thank you, Lord, for bringing 'Patriot Act' and 'extraordinary rendition' to our revolutionary vocabulary.