231 years

This week we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence; and it is still worthy of our celebration. 231 years ago, these United States shook off the yoke of a King, and in the process developed and implemented a few ideas about the purpose and limitations of the State, and citizens' roles in that state. Many of these ideas had never been tested. The American Revolution rested on the idea that government was instituted to protect rights -- rights preceded the state, and the chief function of government was to protect these rights. The right to life was chief of these, followed closely by the right to liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

This meant that government did not exist to please the sovereign, even if the people themselves were "the sovereign." Instead, government should be a protector of what man naturally possessed. The people themselves were capable of tyranny as well. Indeed, a few years later, in one European nation, "the people" demonstrated the ability to be as despotic and tyrannical as any king. The purpose of government was thus to be a protector of free men, rather than a condescending parent or a shepherd; political power existed to benefit neither the poor nor the rich; it was to protect the one against the many.



The result of the signing of this Declaration was a long series of wars pitting the freest nation in the world against the second-freest nation in the world. This has not happened since. Over the course of those battles, our enemy became our greatest ally, having exported those very ideas that the Americans implemented, redigesting them at home. The Americans could have never been so free without the British; we owe them a hint of thanks on this day, in spite of one of their kings.

We are still testing whether any nation so conceived can endure. The idea that the state exists to keep people free, free to grow, free to take risks, even free to make occasionally fail, is just as controversial now as it was over two centuries ago. What was self-evident to those men in Philadelphia -- freedom is in the pursuit of happiness; a guaranteed happiness is artificial, and certainly not freedom -- is not evident to some today. We are in fact seeing in many places the freedom to occasionally fail curtailed to the extent that it makes it difficult to truly succeed. We see other places where majority-rule is equated with freedom, even when it results in a tyranny made all the more oppressive by its very popularity.

The Declaration of Independence is a governmental document, addressed to an international audience, but it is also a document about personal independence, addressed to all humanity. True, the colonies became independent of their master, but that Philadelphia parchment also continues to remind us that every person, regardless of birth or background, brilliance or beauty, has an inhered right -- writ by powers far greater than any state -- to live their life, as long as their actions do not threaten the same liberty of others.

It is a truly revolutionary idea, even today. Happy Independence Day.