A pure, simple, profound and majestic birthday declaration

New Year’s Day is often seen as a time to reflect and to make new plans. People do, and a lot of gym memberships get canceled in February and March. I’ve always had more of an affinity for this time of year. My birthday and that of my country are only three days apart. As of yesterday (Thursday) I am officially middle-aged, providing that I live to be 118 years old.

I also reflect on the birthday of our nation, which as of this weekend will be 245 years old. I wish I could be all roses and lollipops about the current state of our union, but I have my concerns. I find it poignant that on Wednesday of this week we lost Donald Rumsfeld, who I think was a tremendously bright American, but in return, we got Bill Cosby back. I feel a little bit cheated by that deal.

While I’m glad that we are recovering from this covid overreach, I’m concerned that we will continue to have inflationary pressures associated with the pandemic. I’m even more concerned about the partisan bickering that has resulted in the weaponization of the courts, the weaponization of law enforcement, and now, the weaponization of education, yet I remain hopeful.

This holiday weekend represents the assembly of the greatest of all documents. The Bible is nice, but it’s sometimes hard to sort out the truth from the metaphor, and the Constitution was signed after the political horse-trading started. Our Declaration of Independence is pure and simple, and a majestic piece of work. Yes, much of it was taking shots at King George. Those parts are secondary to me, but the rest was truly revolutionary.

“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.” OK. We didn’t hit the ball out of the park on this one. It took us a civil war and about 150 years to achieve that, and we still have room for improvement. Most Americans still aspire to that pledge.

But then it says, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,” and “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” By 18th century standards, that was relatively new thinking. Paine and Locke talked about it, but our guys did it. That was a radical concept at the time. Folks talk about the “shot heard around the world” in the context of Lexington and Concord. I think it’s right here in the document.

Here’s the money shot: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” A total of 56 individuals signed the document, which was an act of treason. That was at the beginning of a war that took eight years to resolve. They had no idea how it was going to end. When Ben Franklin famously said, “We must hang together or surely we shall hang separately,” he wasn’t kidding. They all faced serious consequences if the revolution didn’t work out. There are a few of the signers who did suffer considerable privations due to the war. It was an act of faith. It was an act of bravery. These are our founding fathers.

If you like to blow things up, God bless. We want to support local business, but I am at the age where I can read the Declaration and get as many goosebumps. I don’t scare the dog, annoy the neighbors or watch fifty bucks go up in flames.

Read the original here.