As we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, here are some reflections on its key concepts:
Life: Life is the basic right of every human being. All good laws should contribute to its protection and edification. What life should be protected? All of it, as much as can be. Civilized humans avoid needless violence and killing. Killing animals for food and other resources is the way of life, killing purely for sport, or out of cruelty is the way of death. The unborn? We’ll if it’s a life, then yes. The old and the sick? Death is also part of life, but again, it should not be brought about wantonly or casually. People talk about dying with dignity, especially as a rationale for euthanasia. I prefer the idea of living with dignity. How is it beneath anybody’s dignity to fight until their very last breath? Being in a pitiful physical state does not equal being pitiful in a spiritual state, on the contrary, it is often the opposite.
Liberty: Liberty is the chance to use our gift of life to its fullest advantage. Without basic liberties, mankind is held back from reaching its fullest potential. That is why liberty curtailing forms of government like Communism and Socialism are immoral, or at best, amoral. Liberty comes with the freedom to fail, and learn from our mistakes. Liberty, the Founders knew, is a fragile thing, easily destroyed. We must protect our liberties jealously because once lost they are very difficult to regain. Of all the laws that have ever been passed, how many have increased liberty? Very few compared to the number of those that limit it.
Our American government has done well extending liberty to classes of people that once lacked it. That is government at its best. The problem is that government rarely expands the freedoms of its citizens at large. Upon gaining the rights of the majority those same formerly oppressed groups find themselves at the lifetime high water mark of their freedom, only to have other liberties gradually taken away and suppressed by mountains of regulation. It’s like a castaway that washes up on the beach of an island to safety, only to find the beach is eroding into the sea. Our freedoms are like those grains of sand, being eroded one by one until someone decides to fight it.
The Pursuit of Happiness. “The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.” –Benjamin Franklin. The Declaration of Independence only suggests that humans have that right to pursue happiness, but the achievement of it can only be done by ourselves. The biggest mistake is to confuse happiness with pleasure. Drugs can produce pleasure, but never happiness. Pleasure is fleeting, true happiness can be maintained over much longer periods of time. The other mistake we humans make is to think that happiness will just happen. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it must be earned. Members of the Armed Forces often forgo the happiness of home and family for long periods of time so that they and others can have it to a fuller degree when they return. The miracle of happiness is that giving it produces more of it.
We hear all the time in seems about tough jobs that supposedly, American’s won’t do. I don’t believe it, mainly because I’ve worked in several of those jobs myself. Thank God there is one really tough job that for centuries, so far enough Americans have wanted to do. One where the pay and living conditions aren’t always the best, one that calls for huge sacrifices on the part of those who volunteer to do it and their families: Serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.
What direction will America take? Will she choose to take the easy, intellectually bankrupt path to European-style socialism, or will she stay true to her self and take the less easy but potentially more rewarding path? Will we decide that things like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are just curiosities of a bygone era, or that those documents still mean something and still ought to be followed? America is at a crossroads, it’s cliche but is no less true. Where other elections have been about tax rates, or what the defense budget should be, this election is over the very what the very purpose of government is, and what America’s role in the world should be.
If you’re voting for free education, or for lower taxes, you’ve missed the whole argument, the real question being put to the voters this year. This year you have to choose sides. The question before us is no less than that put before the Constitutional convention in May of 1787: What sort of republic will America be? We have to decide anew what sort of country we’ll have for the rest of the 21st century. People will say this is exaggeration, hyperbole. They don’t get it. They would be at a loss to explain why those men spent all that time in the hot Philadelphia summer many years ago, deliberating, discussing, arguing, deciding. They would not understand what the big deal was, how momentous that achievement was. They do not see that it is 1787 all over again, and the choice once again is: Who will rule the people of this country and how? Will Americans be the rulers or be the ruled? We need to choose wisely, and understand the far-reaching effects of our vote.
Saturday marked the 229th anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. It established the United States as the world’s first constitutional republic. We may be mere months from the end of America’s existence as such. 2017 could be the first year of a new, post-Constitutional era. If Hillary Clinton is elected president her choices of Supreme Court justices will tip the balance in favor of a Court that sees the Constitution as a “living document”, one that can be interpreted to mean whatever they need it to mean. On that day, the Constitution, already in exile, will cease to function as a constraint on government.
