Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Declaration of Independance: The Spirit of America

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

"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.

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."

If only one thing can be said of America, it is that she can take great esteem in this declaration written by the "Committee of Five" including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. Especially in Thomas Jefferson who wrote the original draft over a period of seventeen days. It is a sublime compliment of political treatise and English prose establishing for itself in each
a sovereign place of eruditional distinction. Thomas Jefferson certainly labored diligently and effectively to communicate to the most powerful head of state in his day, King George III, the colonist's every intention to emancipate themselves from English rule. Employing the most equitable and humane correspondence probably ever devised for the purpose of remonstrance and separation of relations.

If there is such a thing as a 'Dear John' letter, the Declaration of Independence is certainly not that. It is the "Dear George" letter, and exists on a plane far above the former in form and commitment as a ball point pen does from a quill dipped in the volunteered blood of her patriots. The Declaration of Independence was not just some well worded essay that would have enchanted the literary crowd of the New Yorker or the politophiles reading the New Republic or The Atlantic. It was a declaration of separation and thereby a declaration of war detailed and dispatched for and to the King of England. Every signer knew, it would entail the loss of thousands of lives and venture them further from any prospects of a homeostatic domesticity.


However, this document today is seldom brought to bear on the contest and disputes we convene today. When it comes to issues of God in America, "The Unanimous Declaration of The Thirteen United States of America" is never addressed. When it comes to natural law, this Declaration so equanimously written is ignored. How is it that this great treasure of these United States can be so removed from our political dialogue and national contentions? Clearly, the founding fathers incorporated God and natural law into the political thesis of what this country was all about? Certainly, no further would they have gone, had the outcome of this written expostulation turned out deleterious for the signers and all involved. Certainly, we would have no Constitution had the War of Independence gone horribly against our favor? How then has this most representative document of the American spirit found no home amongst us? Who is foreign to us? The authors of this political document? God and the recognition of natural law to these shores? Or, have we progressed into delusion and self absorption to the discredit of those who pioneered into the most strident realm of adversity in order to win our independence?

If the Constitution of the United States is the 'body' of American law, certainly the Declaration of Independence is her spirit.

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