https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/03/what-the-fourth-of-july-was-not/
Our national Fourth of July holiday—currently the nation’s 247th since the first in 1776—marks the birth of the United States.
The iconic Declaration of Independence was published on the 4th and largely written by Thomas Jefferson. Its core sentence would become among the most famous words in American history:
“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.”
Those aspirations at the outset pledged the new American nation to hold to its promises “that all men are created equal.”
In other words, so-called white males established a foundational document whose inherent logic was that the millions of Americans not yet born—who would not necessarily look like them, or share their ancestry—would become their political equals.
Most nation founders do not envision the future of their country in terms that might not privilege those of their own tribe.
In contrast, today it would be difficult for a foreign national to become a full-fledged Chinese, Mexican, or Iranian citizen, with full equal rights, who either did not look like, or embrace a religion different from, the majority population.
What followed from the Declaration was a constant demand from many quarters for America to live up to its own exalted words.
Eighty-five years later, that promise culminated in a horrific Civil War that cost 700,000 American lives to remove the stain of slavery, and to honor the promise of the Fourth.
“All men are created equal” further entailed another century of protest and reform, until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s finally enshrined into law equality of opportunity statutes.
But note what the Declaration was not.
There was no full embrace of all the later French Revolutionary slogans of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Instead, the Declaration promised that all men should start out equally through guaranteed protections to live their lives as they please and ensure their liberty.
