“We hold these truths to be self-evident...”

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Catching the Mosquito

I didn't think I would put essays over here; thought they'd likely go onto one of the other blogs.  But this popped up in my Memories from the non- accessible Facebook notes and I thought it worth a repost.  So, yeah, essays may show up here too...

July 4, 1776...after a year of arguing and protesting against a government that refused to see the colonies as anything other than a source of revenue...a group of statesmen affixed their signatures to a document written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, declaring their autonomy and independence from that government. The war would grind on for 5 more years and involve France and Spain before the colonists, now calling themselves Americans, would accept the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The final British troops would not withdraw from the cities of Charleston and Savannah until late 1782, and victory become official when Great Britain formally recognized the autonomy of the United States of America with the signing of the Treaty of Paris September 3, 1783.

It’s interesting that we don’t celebrate Independence Day on September 3, as that was when the US formally and legally became a separate nation, but that date is barely noted anywhere. It’s also surprising that we don’t celebrate Independence Day on October 19, the day Cornwallis surrendered, as was the end of the major conflict, but that date, too, is obscure and unremarked.

No, we celebrate Independence Day on the day 56 men, representing all thirteen colonies, put their names to a document that held some of the loftiest ideals that could ever be the foundation of a nation. The men that signed the document were far from perfect in implementing the ideals they proclaimed; products of their time, they didn’t even see the irony in declaring that ‘all men are created equal’ while they owned slaves. It took another century and another war to end that practice, but eighty years after that Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed ‘I have a dream’...and his dream described a country that embraced the ideals it had been founded upon, because ‘all men are created equal’ was still not a reality. We are still struggling today for that ideal to be realized in actuality across our land. God willing, we will get it right.

But those founding fathers were reaching for ideals that they scarcely could imagine. No nation had ever had such a goal, such a declaration, in its founding. No one ever had a nation founded on the rule of law...that all were equal. They failed utterly in implementing it perfectly, but it is the standard they set in the beginning. Our best hope for our country is not in tearing down and destroying the legacy they left us, but in working together to truly implement the ideals they expressed...that all are equal under the law, and all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution together provide unparalleled structure for a free society; it is our responsibility to uphold that structure to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.