Declaration’s words echo on July Fourth

Editor’s note: The meaning of the Declaration of Independence is timeless. This editorial first ran in the Herald one year ago.

“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 ...”

This bold declaration made on this day [241] years ago — and read today from the balcony of the Old State House — is where our history as a nation begins. But it was far more than a listing of grievances against the absentee landlords in London. It was a promise to those willing to undertake the fight for independence that they were fighting not just for the liberation of the land on which they stood but for a very different form of government — one that would end up being like no other in the world.

Today for all our concerns about this party or that, about this candidate or that, there remains a set of values — American values — that transcend partisan bickering, just as the Founders had to put aside their petty squabbles to say in a voice loud and clear:

“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.”

Again the reference to “happiness” as if somehow this dour group of civic leaders — lawyers and merchants and farmers — would follow their grand gesture in Philadelphia by dancing in the streets. Historians have argued at some length about the interpretation of “happiness” as used in the Declaration of Independence.

Safe to say no one thinks it’s used in the Pharrell Williams sense (although “Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth” comes kind of close). Most seem to think it meant a combination of prosperity and the freedom to live a good and decent and peaceful life — with government there as a backstop and a bulwark against tyranny.

We have come a long way since then — too far many would say — with government not as a backstop but as a granter of favors, a bestower of all things good and true. But the marvel of this amazing system we have built — built from scratch — is that it has a way of righting itself over time.

Out with the old guard, in with the new. We have seen the pattern time and again.

Even in these most perilous of times — or perhaps because of them — those self-evident truths and those unalienable rights remain as sacred as they were back when the Founders first invoked them. Our duty today remains as it was back then to “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to assure they live on.