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Two hundred and forty-nine years ago, 56 men met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia to commit treason against the most powerful empire on Earth.
Representing 13 colonies of that empire, these men – a mix of landowners, entrepreneurs, politicians and others – had become enamored with a new set of ideas flowing from enlightenment thinkers and Christian teaching. Those convictions led them to start a war no sane person believed they could win.
Remember what government looked like back then. We now live in the world those 56 men created – a world in which even dictatorships like North Korea cloak themselves in the language of “republic.”
Detail of John Trumbull’s painting, “Declaration of Independence,” which depicts the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration presenting their work to the Congress. (“Declaration of Independence” – detail of the painting by John Trumbell)
But in 1776, freedom, equality and self-governance were nascent concepts espoused by philosophers and adopted only incompletely in a few small enclaves. The vast majority of countries in the world were hereditary monarchies and empires under which equal rights and individual liberty were not contemplated. The Founders’ fight seemed incomprehensible.
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In launching it, the Second Continental Congress largely tasked one man – Thomas Jefferson – with drafting the document that would articulate their vision for humanity and this new country and reshape history.
Imagine how he must have felt. Jefferson secluded himself from June 11 to June 28 in a rented home on Market Street to draft the document. He was 33 years old at the time. In isolation in that rented townhome he drafted what I think is one of the most beautiful passages in history:
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.
The Second Continental Congress largely tasked one man – Thomas Jefferson – with drafting the document that would articulate their vision for humanity and this new country and reshape history.
Read it again. Read it as if you were living under a Spanish colony in South America or under the iron fist of the Qing dynasty in China. Read it as if you were a poor tenant farmer under the oppressive rule of King George in Virginia or an enslaved person in Georgia (whose freedom under the principles of the Declaration was still decades away).
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Read it as if you grew up in a system that assumed you were worth less than your neighbor by virtue of your social station, and under which your future was limited by the circumstances of your birth.
The Declaration was, in fact, a “revolutionary” statement articulating the ideological and factual basis for a coup against empire. But spiritually, it was more important than that.
It was a revolution against history. It was a revolution against the idea that some men (and women) are worth more than others. It was a revolution for the idea of dignity, human rights, and equality before law.
American colonists toppled a statue of King George III on Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan on July 9, 1776. (William Walcutt (1819-1895). Painted 1857)
And when Jefferson submitted his document to the Congress, and those 56 men signed it and shipped it off to King George and to others rulers around the world, they ignited a war in the America colonies that would become a centuries-long war to transform the globe from tyranny to liberty.
READ: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
War they got. Five of the signers were captured, tortured and killed. Nine died from wounds or hardships fighting in the war. All were impacted – raked by violence, their homes and property ravaged, their children thrust into the violence they created. They starved. They lost battles.
They must have wondered if it was worth it – these ideals that had caused them to plunge a nation into violence. And then, unexpectedly, they won.
In creating America, those Founding Fathers reshaped history. We now live in a world in which nearly half of countries are democracies. The combination of political freedom, free markets and the technological innovation unleashed by those systems has lifted billions of people out of poverty – creating a world more than 100 times richer than the one that existed at the time of the Declaration of Independence.
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The dominant ideology now globally is the one articulated in the Declaration. And the revolution in America has become a revolution in human history.
This weekend in the United States we celebrate Independence Day. We celebrate 56 men who risked everything. But we also solemnly reflect on the charge of the Declaration and its authors.
All people are created equal. We are all endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Each of us deserves life, liberty, and the ability to pursue our own unique paths to flourishing. But those inalienable rights are not guaranteed. As our forebears, we are called to embrace and fight for them.
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Abraham Lincoln once noted that great men “thirst and burn for distinction” and will have it, “whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving free men.” And around the world the powers that oppose liberty, dignity and opportunity fight ceaselessly to dominate others.
May we, on this Independence Day, fight back. May we have the audacity and conviction to oppose the enemies of liberty and to continue to fight for the promise of the Declaration and America’s spiritual foundation. May we do so out of love – for our neighbors and for the blessings of the Creator. And may we gain courage from the example of those 56 men, their hundreds of thousands of compatriots, and the unwinnable war they won. Happy Independence Day.
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