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TechnoratiTop Ten Things You May Have Forgotten About The Declaration of Independence
1. It's the "Declaration of Independence," not the "Declaration of World Domination."
Just in case anyone in the current White House forgot.
2. According to the signers of the Declaration, it's okay to care about what the rest of the world thinks. The very rationale of the Declaration is that when folks do something as momentous as dissolve existing political bonds, "a decent respect as to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
3. According to the signers of the Declaration, government is a Good Thing. It's what enables us to "secure these rights" of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
4. The second paragraph of the Declaration is almost entirely inspired by John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, especially the assertion of the right of revolution and the principle of justifying government by consent of the governed. That's very important. Notably, however, the Declaration does not state that we have an "unalienable Right" to property.
5. Nor, related to this, do we have a right to be free from taxation as such. Instead, we have a moral right to be free from taxation "without our Consent."
6. It turns out that the signers of the Declaration were big fans of the "benefits of Trial by Jury" and opposed to "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences." Fortunately, the federal appeals court which earlier this week ruled that the Bush Administration has wrongly held a Chinese Muslim in Guantanamo Bay for six years agrees. Many similar cases regarding Guantanamo prisoners are expected to be heard in coming months in the wake of last month's restoration by the Supreme Court (over the Bush Administration's protests) of the detainees' habeas corpus rights.
7. The signers of the Declaration took it as a complaint that King George was "transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries" to fight against the colonists. Evidently they didn't realize what a fine, upstanding job those Blackwater people are capable of.
8. The Declaration also complains of the use of "Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages" by the crown. It's hard to say exactly, but that sounds like the signers probably thought that torture and other forms of "Cruelty" were an unconditionally bad thing.
9. What's not hard to say is that at the heart of the Declaration is an assertion of a universal right to self-determination. One nation should not dominate another, nor should it interfere in another's affairs. The specific list of offenses in the Declaration is a reminder that occupation of one people by another is bound to lead to a series of abuses. This is an important thought to keep in mind as America enters its sixth year in Iraq. The Iraqis at this point probably could put together a pretty long list of abuses committed by occupying Americans if they wanted to, the most damning of which is our utter incompetence in assembling a functional new government.
10. Finally, and this may be heresy, by declaring the "self-evident" truth that "All men are created equal" did not in itself make it so. Equality and liberty are just words on paper if they are not realized in practice. Doing that in the American case required not just throwing off the British yoke, but also establishing a constitutional form of government, and then filling in a few "minor" details along the way....such as adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, ending slavery, enfranchising women, recognizing the rights of labor, ending Jim Crow and legal discrimination, starting to establish civil rights for gays and lesbians, making public spaces accessible to the disabled . . . None of those things would have happened-not even the Bill of Rights, as University of Richmond historian Woody Holton reminds us in his recent book Unruly Americans-without the loud, committed and engaged struggles of ordinary people willing to challenge elite groups and established customs.
That's why discussions of the Declaration of Independence like that offered this week by neoconservative guru William Kristol (one of the geniuses who brought you the Iraq War) celebrating the Declaration as an exercise of leadership by brave elites are not so much wrong, as wrong-headed.
The bald statements of a right to self-determination, the assertion of human equality, and the assertion of fundamental rights which government must respect contained in the Declaration are all important for their own sake. But we don't get self-government, the realization of equality, and the protection and the exercise of liberty simply by declaring it; we get it only through sustained civic engagement with and oversight of government.
So by all means, just as Kristol suggests, make it a 4th of July tradition to break out the Declaration and read with your friends and family what old TJ had to say 232 years ago. But don't expect to find a document sanctioning a view of the world that so it's okay for some countries to dominate others, by invasion and occupation if necessary, or okay to simply ignore what the rest of the world thinks. The entire theme of the document is anti-imperialistic to the core, repeatedly voicing the thought that it's unnatural for one group of people to try to rule another (especially from a long distance).
And don't take it for granted that the grand but imperfect political experiment set in motion 232 years ago-the idea that you could achieve meaningful self-government across an expansive territory-cannot yet fail. It might, if we let elites (especially deranged neoconservative elites) rule in our name, and if we forget that as soon as we fall into the belief that politics and the work of governance are someone else's business, we cease to remain our own masters.
Thad Williamson is assistant professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond and an associate of Dollars & Sense magazine.
16 Comments so far
Show AllI wonder what a declaration of independence, and a constitution would look like if it were written today, for today's world- if written again, from scratch..?
It seems that there has been way too much jury-rigging and addending, like over-decorating a christmas tree. maybe it is time for someone to "re-imagine" the same documents.. to get a grounding idea of what they should look like for base line rules, rather than searching for " loopholes" and escape routes around the laws.
@ canuckchuck:
your quote:
"Never forget that the men who declared that "all men are created equal" owned black slaves, didn't allow participation of women in government, and were rapists of black female slaves."
i'm guessing you didn't make it all the way through the article.
10. Finally, and this may be heresy, by declaring the "self-evident" truth that "All men are created equal" did not in itself make it so. Equality and liberty are just words on paper if they are not realized in practice. Doing that in the American case required not just throwing off the British yoke, but also establishing a constitutional form of government, and then filling in a few "minor" details along the way….such as adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, ending slavery, enfranchising women, recognizing the rights of labor, ending Jim Crow and legal discrimination, starting to establish civil rights for gays and lesbians, making public spaces accessible to the disabled . . . None of those things would have happened-not even the Bill of Rights, as University of Richmond historian Woody Holton reminds us in his recent book Unruly Americans-without the loud, committed and engaged struggles of ordinary people willing to challenge elite groups and established customs.
dcbeltway July 5th, 2008 11:57 am
Thank you Samson.
Thank you both!
Corp-mocracy is not democracy, it's mokery and hipocracy!
Thank you Samson.
kimworth@att.net July 4th, 2008 7:52 pm..Everyone has their opinion.....that's what freedom of speech is partially about. Why discourage folks from looking at opinion and facts other than your own? I don't agree with all on that site, but there is much to be examined. There may even be some facts of which OTHERS are not aware. Of what is there to be afraid? As children, we were fed an entirely fictional account of this country. As we grew older, we started researching things ourselves and reading books from Zinn, Chomsky and Chalmers. Keep an open mind..it's healthy. Only an idea...make your own choice.
canuckchuck, why are you hating this entire country now? Every post has been mean. My friends civil fucking rights are being destroyed by the second, they're Stop-Loss victims of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are refusing to be redeployed but won't leave the US. What do you think is going to happen to them? Same shit that happened to Camilo. Canada won't let any Resistors stay, either. WTF, canuckchuck. I'm not finding every province of Canada jerked off!
What canuckchuck said is merely the truth. He just left another large group of people, US citizens, that the US government was dedicated to destroying their freedoms and civil rights.
The evil British may have participated in slavery for a long time, but they abolished it before the US did, and did not have to kill so many to pass abolition. Some feel that preserving slavery was a major motive for the Revolution in the South.
Remembering that these 2 major failings in US history is every bit as important as the path to independence, if not more so. The reason is that, while we are not at the absolute low point for freedom in the US, we are still significantly short of achieving the ideals embodied in the Declaration and the Constitution.
Not a bad piece, but like with most sequels, the original is better ....
"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 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."
Gee chuck, got a bitter taste in your mouth from kissing the Queen's bum all those years?
America may not be the ideal today, but it was a hell of a better idea to begin with than anything the meek Canadians ever came up with. We had the sense and the dignity to tell the King exactly where to go stuff it. Never was a problem with that. The problem is that we need to do it again.
Never forget that the men who declared that "all men are created equal" owned black slaves, didn't allow participation of women in government, and were rapists of black female slaves.
Your entire country is a sham.
Don't waste your time going to "Willybill"s link. It's that brain-dead, historically ignorant libertarian rot that will only irritate you if you've ever read a book. Why do we have a government that does more than deliver mail? Wow! That's a poser. Maybe because it's no longer the 18th century, genius. Corporations used to be local and temporary and now we [the people] need protection from them for reasons so numerous and obvious that one must assume you're ideologically blind (or ignorant of the past). Oh, and the SWILL about the founders' faith in "God's Law". Funny how they seem to have missed every opportunity to mention religion in any founding document. It's almost as if they were a bunch of Deists. Oh yeah,I almost forgot, they were. I could go on but you get the idea... nothing new here.
Why even mention that puke William Kristol? That's enough to ruin a good slice of watermelon.
Happy Independence Day to all Usanians!
As we commemorate the independence of the third largest state in the world and the world's second-largest democracy, people of all nations would do well to contemplate the wisdom of their ancestors:
"So likewise a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."
George Washington
"Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder."
Ataturk
At some point someone objecting to the Bill of Rights wanted to know why we need it ---
And one of the Founders said that ... these rights needed to be written down "because not all men are honest men."
It is also well-noted that the Founders cited "all enemies,
foreign and domestic."
They also provided impeachment and the impeachment of the president and the vice-president should they "conspire" together in corruption.
Obviously, the document only lives, our rights are only
protected, when we EXERCISE the options they provided.
Where arth thou, Democrats . . . ???
And a thank you once again to Rep. Dennis Kucinich
and his courage in facing the powerful and corrupt in our
government.
Check this out ...............
http://www.fourwinds10.com./siterun_data/bellringers_corner/people_of_the_lie/news.php?q=1206983637