Maybe We Need a Re-write?

“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”.  U.S. Declaration of Independence from 1776.

Not real sure that statement was believed in 1776, and I’m pretty sure there are many people who would have some problems with this declaration today.  The created equal part gets a lot of attention since there are many contradictions to that statement in our history; and those contradictions existed when this was written. 

I think the second part is the one most overlooked.  Certain unalienable Rights.  Unalienable means—impossible to take away or give up.  Unalienable rights; Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Ignoring the rather critical fact that this did not exist then and we have had lots of problems living by those words, but wow, what a statement to include in your founding documents.

In this country you have the absolute right to Life, Freedom and to pursue happiness.  Double Wow.  That is so amazing.  If only it had been true.  We all know slavery never fit into this high-minded declaration, or for that matter women.  No woman had rights associated with the pursuit of happiness or in most circumstance freedom. 

This statement was for the ruling class white men who were generally also wealthy landowners.  Now maybe when they were composing this grand prose it was their plan to add substantial footnotes to clarify to everyone else there was no intent on including them, but they decided that was understood, and therefore, there was no reason to state the obvious in the document.

So, two-hundred and forty-five years later and the declaration seems phony.  We still cannot get to the point where we can say “all men are created equal”.  That bit of tomfoolery is still going on today.  Certain people are equal and certain people are not.  And the most equal get to decided who is less equal.

Or the other option might be that the writers really believed the words as a goal or an ideal.  They wanted the document to be how the country should be not how it was.  I supposed that could be why they wrote what they did.  But I have trouble believing they were anxious to share the wealth of the country with everyone—including native Americans and slaves?  Yeah, find that hard to believe.

Much of our current political debate is centered around the concept of this country as being a place for everyone.  Somehow, we have not actually agreed on that simple and basic founding belief.  We can read the words, but as they knew then and we know now, that really isn’t what it means.

Why did the founding fathers not think in terms of class, racial background, and gender realities?  Because they were talking about themselves, and it was an exclusive club.  They meant those words, it was just that they meant them for themselves, not the vast mix of people the country became.

But even though the intent may have been skewed, the actual words stand as an honorable and admirable goal for a country.  Now we should try to make them real.

In a strange way it seems to me, we should have a new statement of what this country stands for.  I wonder if we could agree on any of it.  Let’s say we took an editor’s red pen to the above declaration and took out the parts that would be controversial –what would we have?

“We hold these opinions truths to be reasonable self-evident, that all men people are important created equal, that they are endowed by their own being Creator with certain unalienable responsibilities Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty with restrictions and the pursuit of Hard Work Happiness“.  U.S. Declaration of Independence from 1776.

Probably couldn’t get people to agree with that water downed version either. 

Is that what we really want the country to be?  It seems to me rather than change the statement we need to live to the ideal.  No matter what the authors thought at the time, it is a great statement that establishes the basic goals of a great country—if only we could live by those words.