Winsome Wisdom – Declaration against Dependence

 
For your humble correspondent, the month of July holds a special memory due to a visit to my cousins in Delaware many years ago. While there, I took the opportunity to do the Patriot’s Tour in Philadelphia, which included Independence Hall, the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed. 

 

The tour guide was a native Philly fan:  a tall, lanky, very entertaining ranger with the US Park Service who wore the traditional green and grey uniform with the Smokey-the-Bear hat. 
 
As he narrated in vivid detail the events leading up to the affixation of those fateful signatures, one could almost feel the tension that must have permeated that room during those sweltering summer days. The heat must have weighed heavily during those discussions and debate. I wonder if those discussions might have gone differently had there been air conditioning?
 
But it was in that sultry room that the debate played out, and the die was cast. These men of privilege risked their very lives, the lives of their friends and family, and their wealth for one abstract concept ... freedom. 

These brave men wanted freedom from the oppressive rules and regulations passed down by a tyrannical monarch and a rapacious British parliament. They even demonstrated their displeasure by forming themselves into a group known as the Sons of Liberty, dressing up in Native American garb, then smashing open 340 chests of British East India Company tea, weighing roughly 46 tons, and dumping it into Boston Harbor the night of December 16, 1773. The damage caused in today’s money was worth more than $1,700,000 .  

The Declaration of Independence opens with the following words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation ...

The founding fathers then proceeded to itemize a menu of grievances targeted specifically toward the current reigning British monarch, George III, which included:

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only...
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people...
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent...

But it’s that second part that is best remembered and most relevant:

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 of 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.
 
Let us never forsake the values from whence we grew and flourished, for it is those that will surely help us better choose the right path to liberty and prosperity.