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Happy Fourth of July! If you’re weary of constant resentment and bitterness in America’s politics, then today might be just the festive reprieve you need... As long as you don’t pay too much attention to the Declaration of Independence https://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
We just celebrate the Declaration’s preamble.
Actually, not even the entire preamble. Just part of the second paragraph about truths the founders held to be self-evident:
Human equality
Divine endowments
Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
Actually, not even the entire preamble. Just part of the second paragraph about truths the founders held to be self-evident:
Human equalityDivine endowmentsLife, liberty & the pursuit of happiness http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
That exceedingly brief patch of writing has earned centuries of praise, setting a revolutionary standard of human dignity — albeit one not quite in tune with the new nation given the cruelty-tiered classes http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
After that aspirational sentence or so, comes a big long list of complaints.
The longest section is dedicated to a bitter protest against the “long train of abuses and usurpations” inflicted by a king http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
The longest section is dedicated to a bitter protest against the “long train of abuses and usurpations” inflicted by a king http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
In the Declaration, seething colonists rage against mercenaries dispatched by the king “to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages” http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
There was plenty of barbarism about. Thomas Jefferson, whose mind was free to roam while his slaves worked, grew so spiteful of Britain that he abandoned his English taste for Madeira & Port.
A true patriot, after all, could survive on fine Bordeaux
http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
A true patriot, after all, could survive on fine Bordeaux
http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
Yet despite the deep anger, and high stakes, it wasn’t long before fireworks and parades replaced abuses and usurpations as the stuff of the 4th.
At the Declaration’s jubilee, in 1826, there was an outpouring of self-congratulation and very little outrage http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
At the Declaration’s jubilee, in 1826, there was an outpouring of self-congratulation and very little outrage http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
Now all that remains is the heart of the matter: a concise moral vision, and a spur to reimagining the human condition.
The vision laid the basis for a more equal nation, something that isn’t evident at all in modern America http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
The vision laid the basis for a more equal nation, something that isn’t evident at all in modern America http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
The vision and spur is what distinguishes modern-day complaints -- the protests against injustice and venting via Twitter from the White House.
The former seek to realize the self-evident truth as laid out in the Declaration. The latter, well, doesn’t http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
The former seek to realize the self-evident truth as laid out in the Declaration. The latter, well, doesn’t http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
The protesters’ grievance is anchored in the higher calling that, for many Americans, is all we remember of the Declaration: http://bloom.bg/3gpKpW3
