Happy July 4th! On July 4, 1776, 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. By doing so they were risking their lives, for if the British had won the Revolutionary War they would have all been hanged as traitors against the King of England.
In signing the Declaration they introduced into the political realm ideas that would change the world: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that governments are instituted to secure those rights; and if government isn't doing it's job, it's the right of the people to alter or abolish it. |
Marianne speaking at the Jefferson Memorial |
Such ideals of personal liberty and potential for self-actualization lie at the heart of what America means. Our second president, John Adams, said he hoped that on every July 4th we would revisit those ideals. The Declaration of Independence is like America's mission statement – yet we must do the inner work of aligning our hearts with the mission or the ideals become as mere dust.
From the very beginning, there were those whose hearts were certainly not aligned with our highest ideals. For out of the 56 signers of the Declaration, 41 of them were slaveowners! From the very beginning of the republic there have been two opposing forces that constitute our characterological make-up: those willing to do whatever it takes to actualize America's highest ideals, and those willing to shatter those ideals if they do not align with their own financial or ideological purposes.
So it has been from the beginning and throughout our history. Every generation has experienced an iteration of that struggle, some more dramatically than others, and have dealt with it in their own ways. Yet despite the viciousness of anti-democratic forces that have always lurked in our national experience, in the long arc of America history the ideals of equality and justice have ultimately prevailed. Our ancestors repudiated slavery with abolition, they repudiated the institutional suppression of women with the Women's Suffragist movement, they repudiated the Gilded Age with the establishment of organized labor, and they repudiated segregation with the Civil Rights movement.
It's our turn now. |
Today the ideals of equal rights and opportunity enshrined in the Declaration of Independence are not threatened by a particular institution so much as by an economic paradigm. It's simply the idea that corporate profits rather than democratic ideals should be the organizing principle of our society, turning us from a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" into a government "of a few of the people, by a few of the people, and for a few of the people." The results have been, and continue to be, hugely damaging in the lives of millions of Americans and others as well.
Today, on July 4th, let's consider very deeply what all this means – to us as individuals and as a nation. The American experiment does not perpetuate itself; it must be kept alive and protected by those who love it most, generation after generation. Today, our most precious ideals are being assaulted not so much by foreign enemies but by forces within our own society - indeed, within our own government - for whom the radicalism of the equality of all men goes against their grain. We know who they are, and now we need to decide who we are.
Make no mistake about it, they're on the march. Put me in the Oval Office, and they're going to have to deal with Marianne before going one step further.
As it says at the end of the Declaration, I pledge my "sacred honor" that this is true.
Happy July 4th, and thank you so much for your support.
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