July 4, 1776: One Perfect Moment
America's Declaration of Independence
After thousands of years of struggle through oppression and tyranny, there was one perfect moment in human history on a hot summer day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On July 4, 1776 the American Continental Congress issued the American Declaration of Independence. A one-page document, and the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment.
The Declaration of Independence represents the one moment in history when we got it completely right. One perfect moment derived from a morally perfect vision. The words on that parchment may fade with time, but its immortal ideas amplify and reverberate louder and louder through the annals of time:
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.
It’s no accident the United States of America has been a stunning success. When Thomas Jefferson wrote these immortal words in 1776, he gave us the formula for a successful human life and society. A nation was founded on an idea. On rational, moral principles; principles consistent with the nature of reality, which allowed human beings to pursue their own ends according to their own independent judgment. To live their lives for themselves, not for a king, a majority…or a Congress.
Jefferson’s formulation of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness recognized that human beings, by their nature as human beings, must be free. Human beings don’t have the natural advantage of fur, claws, and instincts like the lower animals do. We must be free to apply our minds to take action to improve our lives and must live in a state of political liberty that protects that requirement. Free to choose and pursue those things each of us thinks—in our own independent mind and judgment—are most likely to achieve our safety and security. Our happiness in Jefferson’s formulation.
Jefferson went on to give us guidance in the Declaration on the sole purpose of government—to protect liberty.
That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
When people are not free, they are reduced to being less than human, because the requirement for their survival, let alone their prospering and flourishing, is eliminated. America has been a success because its essential nature met the conditions for success—individual freedom protected by political liberty.
All centrally planned, collectivist schemes ultimately fail because of their denial of nature and reality; because of their fundamental violation of freedom with force and coercion, their violation of freedom of action, self-interest and self-determination. America met those requirements, however, and flourished as a result, becoming a beacon of hope to all people everywhere. A “shining city on a hill.”
Property rights are the bulwark of freedom, and the first property right is the right of ownership you have in yourself; in your own life. If you don’t control the product of your effort, you are not free. In an 1816 letter to Joseph Milligan, a prominent bookseller, Jefferson wrote from his home at Monticello that, “the first principle of association is the first guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” The Supreme Court underscored this in a 1795 case[1] noting that the right of possessing and acquiring property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and unalienable rights of humanity stating that, “no man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property is the primary object of the social compact.”
I’ll note briefly here that the idea of a social compact should not be confused with the more popularized versions of the social contract in the anti-liberty philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rosseau, which suggests you are somehow automatically bound to the will of the people as expressed by a majority, which is nothing but a precursor to chaos and tyranny. This stands in opposition to the American idea of making the rational choice to associate with others in a “compact”—a mutual understanding—that your respective liberty and property will be protected.
In his first Inaugural address after being elected president in 1800, Jefferson made clear the limits of government power in concert with liberty:
“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
America is a moral nation because it was founded on a moral ideal that is consistent with reality. Reality is immutable; unchanging. Human nature requires freedom for success; for self-interested, goal-directed action. It always has and always will. The more perfectly that freedom is protected, the more success people will have. The more it is violated, the more people, and their societies, will fail.
The American ideal expressed in the Declaration further acknowledges that your life is an end in and of itself. That your happiness is the noble, moral pursuit of your life; that you are not simply a means to the ends of others. People are not robots to be programmed with someone else’s script for their lives. To be cajoled or guilted into fulfilling someone else’s plans and priorities. Jefferson, in his final letter, to Henry Lee, put it thusly:
The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
If human beings are to flourish, we must be free. To be less than free is to be less than human and ultimately fail. The labels of the variations that violate freedom such as socialism, communism, fascism, slavery, feudalism, basically any form of collectivism, don’t really matter. All forms of collectivism fail because they must fail, because they are inconsistent with the nature of reality; with the nature of a truly human existence.
July 4, 1776 gave us that one perfect moment in history. It was ours to build on, as we did with the Constitution to the United States, a brilliant if imperfect effort to codify the principles of the Declaration into a limited government, and with the necessary and inevitable abolition of the horror of slavery. It is also ours to erode it as we have done since the early twentieth century, tolerating an ever more powerful and destructive federal regulatory, welfare/warfare state that no longer respects the limits placed upon it by the Constitution.
The American Declaration of Independence. One perfect moment in July of 1776 gave us the roadmap, the perfect formula for a successful human existence in a flourishing human society.
We are, and of right ought to be, free and independent beings.
Our lives, our prosperity, our flourishing depend on it.
Happy Independence Day.
[1] VANHORNE'S LESSEE v. DORRANCE, 2 U.S. 304 (1795)
An outstanding post!
My own view is that unless or until a properly educated populace can bring to bear on "politics" the "moral" significance embodied in Jefferson's eloquence, the Constitution will remain the more revered document. Its "source" document will remain eloquent and thought important but the moral basis for whatever politics is practiced will remain unappreciated and politically "lost."
As you have demonstrated, it is the Declaration that is the source of America's unprecedented DEMONSTRATED benefits to humanity!
A superb piece Don, reminding the astute reader of why America became what it became!