The echoes of the explosions have faded away, the smell of cordite has drifted down the hollows and over the hills, and many of us will go on to enjoy a long, summer weekend. Fourth of July, Independence Day – what is it really that we really celebrating, and why do some of us think it is really important?
Before the formation of the United States, every nation-state in the history of Mankind had been formed by groups of people, often sharing the same or similar languages and customs. Kings and kingdoms grew from leaders who arose in times of crisis and maintained enough strength of arms to remain in control when the crisis abated. The United States was the first nation in the history of the world that was formed to protect God-given, human rights and liberties. In fact, the United States was the first nation to acknowledge that human being had Rights and Liberties and that they come from God. This, in and of itself, may have been the most revolutionary of all of the revolutionary ideas.
Read the words of the Founders: “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”.
These words and the ideas they express were the most revolutionary political ideas ever presented and even now, 243 years later, they remain the best, most justifiable reasons for the existence of any government. Herein, is the foundation of American Exceptionalism.
Think about the ideas in that paragraph, taken from the Declaration of Independence. “That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”
Just and legitimate governments can only exist through the consent of the people that are governed. This is one of the most radical ideas in politics in human history! With this statement, the Founders of the United States defined for the whole world, for all time, the definition of a legitimate government. No government that comes to power, or remains in power, through coercion, violence, or use of arms against the population can ever be considered legitimate - American Exceptionalism.
Governments are created by people – therefore, governments are the property of the people, the people are not the property of the government. For all of human history, the "people" belonged to the Crown, except in the United States – again, American Exceptionalism.
The purpose of government is to secure the unalienable Rights that accrue to Mankind from God. Any function that a government does, that does not serve to secure human rights and individual liberties is an illegitimate, or at least questionable, function. Another example of American Exceptionalism.
All men are created equal and given certain Rights, by God, that cannot be taken away. There are those among us who will curse and condemn this nation because there was slavery at the time of the founding, because our Founders did not acknowledge "women's rights", or "protect" the Native Americans. Anyone who condemns our founding or our Founders because of these issues is arrogantly ignorant, intolerant, and ill-education. Slavery existed, in one form or another, in almost every country, every culture, every society since the dawn of Time. Nowhere in the world were women included in the body politic. Hells Bells! In most places in the world in 1776, only a few nobles had any rights or freedoms at all. We, America, have gone through amazing struggles to end slavery and to finally incorporate all citizens into the body politic. Not another nation in modern history has struggled and succeeded to the extent that we have. The interpretation of "all men being equal" is likely to continue to evolve, and maybe American Exceptionalism is an ongoing, evolutionary phenomenon.
To condemn the Founders for the things that they left out, things that no one had ever considered in their time or place, is simply ignorant. To discredit, to throw out, to walk away from the phenomenal, exceptional ideas of the American Founding because it wasn't somehow "perfect" smacks of a nearly limitless arrogance. To assume that one can take a hodgepodge of liberal ideas floated from college campi over the last 50 years and make a better system than our Founders did speaks volumes to the stupidity of modern progressives.
The merits of the Founding is well recorded in History. During the first 150 years of our Nation, American Exceptionalism unleashed the greatest period of economic and technological growth in the history of the World. During that century and a half, when our Nation held true to its Founding, America and Americans led the world from conditions that had changed little since the time of Christ into the age of heavier than air flight. At the time of the Founding, the fastest method of travel was horseback. One hundred fifty years later, man was flying in airplanes.
During those 150 years, there was a steady flow of (legal) immigrants arriving on our shores. Like those before them, these (legal) migrants came seeking religious and political freedom and economic opportunity. They left their original nationality behind and willingly became Americans – adding the richness of their cultures to what is the distinct American Culture. They came to grow, to thrive, to try, to be all that God wanted them to be. These people, these Americans, opened a continent, adapted to extreme cold and extreme heat, adapted to forests, mountains, prairies, and deserts and in their adaptation, the created a nation, a dream, a vision that still draws those who want to be free.
I contend that the freedoms guaranteed in our Founding were the energy and drive behind this creativity. I do not think that anyone can prove me wrong.
And that, Faithful Readers, is what we celebrate on July 4th;
“That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” , and the American Exceptionalism that grew from these ideas.
