Today is Independence Day, a day which honors our nation's declaration of freedom from oppressive, meddling government. Lots of people will be picnicking and watching fireworks, but it would be good if everyone set aside a few minutes to read either the Declaration itself or perhaps the Bill of Rights appended to the Constitution a decade and a half later, or both. Wikipedia has a good summary of the history behind the Declaration and the people who signed it.
Like a church liturgy recited every Sunday, we've heard the main points of the founding documents so many times that we tend not to think about the significance of the words when we hear them again. Yet on this day we should take time to let them sink into our hearts and minds. Here, for example, is the best known passage in the Declaration:
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, 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.
Some of the men who undersigned these words paid dearly for it. They lost all they owned and in some cases, even lost their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Rush Limbaugh posts an outstanding essay (adapted, I believe, from a piece by Paul Harvey) which describes what the signers endured in order to secure our freedom. I urge you to read it to get a sense of the sacrifice these people made.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about freedom and individual liberty is this: In every generation there are those who seek to diminish liberty in order to promote what they think to be the collective good or to consolidate their own power. The struggle for freedom is not a once and done fight. It's an ongoing battle, like the contention between a rocky shore and the ceaseless pounding of the waves. The struggle may take different forms, the price to be paid might be greater or less depending on how far freedom's erosion has been allowed to advance before it's arrested and reversed, but it's the same struggle. It's the conflict between those who value being a free people and a state that inveigles us with grand promises of bread and circuses if we will but lay our freedom at their feet.
We live in a time when many citizens of this country have no memory of the cost of freedom and no particular love of the traditions and values which made this country great. Some of these persons have ascended to positions of political influence. For them the great beacons of the past are not our founding fathers but rather people like Karl Marx who argued vehemently for the abolition of individual rights and the establishment of a state where everyone was kept at the same level of economic and personal achievement. These individuals desire to establish a state in which those who get an education, work hard, stay married and sacrifice for their children can be exploited and pillaged in order to bail out those who choose not to order their lives this way, and that's what they've dedicated their lives to working for.
Individual freedom and liberty are under continual assault, even in the United States of America, and the Fourth of July offers us the perfect opportunity to reaffirm our vigilance and our commitment to protect our liberties and to maintain the values and traditions that have made this the greatest nation in the history of human civilization.
RLC