July 4th Message

Better to have a July 4 message late than not at all. This is an excerpt from an article by Bruce Walker. If you wish to read the entire article you may find it here.

The Declaration of Independence, like the Constitution, like the Bill of Rights, like the Gettysburg Address, is a short document. The words of Jefferson, in the first paragraph of the Declaration, explain why it is being written: “… when it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds 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 for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” A decent respect for the opinions of mankind – that is the reason for the Declaration of Independence.

This was not a document for governments: It was a document for the human race. Those who signed the Declaration of Independence were already dead men, if the war was lost: The signers did not sign their death warrant by affixing their names to this brief declaration, but by warring for two years by land and by sea against their political masters. The Declaration of Independence, unlike the Scottish Declaration of Aborath or the English Magna Carta or Petition of Rights or any other human document in history, proclaimed to all mankind the very foundations of government.

So the short written message to the human race continues, after the familiar “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” to these vital words: “That to secure these rights, Governments are formed among Men, drawing 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…”

The Reason for Governments

Governments are formed for one limited, specific reason, proclaimed those men in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Men do not form governments to take care of the sick and needy (people of conscience are enjoined to do that out of the fear of God.) Men do not form governments to build schools or fund health care (philanthropists had been doing this very efficiently for thousands of years without a single government bureaucracy.) Men do not even form governments to keep the economy strong or prevent inflation (our government did not even print money for many decades, and it did not permit money which was not redeemable in gold for more than 150 years after the Declaration.)

The Declaration of Independence proclaims, not to governments but to people everywhere, that government is intended to protect us from government. It proclaims that government itself is simply a way of protecting liberty, and that the liberty protected is liberty from government itself. The specific list of abuses listed in the last part of the Declaration of Independence have nothing to do with the Crown failing to provide health care, schools, welfare programs, prosperity, support for farmers, rights for union workers, or any of the other thousand things we little children ask of it now.

That list of abuses in the Declaration of Independence speaks of the bad things that the Crown has done, such as: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass the people and eat out their substance.” The signers say that government must not deny the governed their rights to liberty and that when it does so, Nature’s God grants us, the governed, the right to reclaim our liberty. That – liberty, and not independence – is what the Declaration of Independence is all about. On the Fourth of July, we celebrate, or we should celebrate, the divine right of freedom.

Our independence is not independence from Britain, which has turned out to be among the best nations among the community of nations. Our independence is from the old notion that government had a right to exist, without regard to the only truly righteous purpose for that government. We Americans rejected that. We embraced liberty as the purpose of government. So let us celebrate our Declaration of Independence from government as government. Let us celebrate our Declaration of Liberty.