‘Strangely, Beautifully Alive’ American traditions and Independence Day. James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/strangely-beautifully-alive-11656701722?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
This is the weekend for reflection upon the most important sentence ever written in this country:
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.
Of course the Declaration of Independence, created 246 years ago this week, contained many other useful sentences. One in particular may offer a healthy perspective for those among us who are inclined to restructure American governance when it doesn’t yield a desired political outcome:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The Declaration also noted that the “King of Great Britain” had “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Among these offenses, contemporary political combatants may wish to note, was that the British government was not allowing enough immigrants to come to America:
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
In our own time the southern U.S. border has tragically become a place of lawlessness, suffering and chaos. Yet the people of color who endure almost unspeakable hardships, risk their lives and sometimes die trying to enter the U.S. demonstrate every day that America is not a racist, oppressive society but the hope of the world. People want in because they know that the liberty promised in that great sentence has been extended to all Americans. The founders were demanding an expansion of legal migration, which still sounds like a plan.
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