Happy 235th Birthday, America!

On July 2nd, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Lee Resolution:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

John Adams, who would succeed George Washington and become the second President of the United States, wrote to his wife the following day:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Close, but no cigar . . . The Declaration of Independence had been drafted some weeks before, after the appointment of a a committee for this purpose comprising John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. Jefferson wrote the draft Declaration after discussing it with the other members of the committee, which then submitted it to Congress. It was debated, slightly amended, and adopted on 4th July, 1776 - hence the date we celebrate each year as Independence Day, even though independence from Great Britain had actually been declared two days earlier.

Why did the American Revolution, almost uniquely among other major Revolutions the world has known, not lead to internecine bloodshed and mass murder? (See, for example, the French Revolution [over a million dead], the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War [about nine million dead], the Mexican Revolution [estimates range from half a million to two million dead], or the Cultural Revolution in China [estimates range from 3 to 30 million dead].)

I submit that the fundamental difference between the American Revolution and virtually all others is that it emphasized individual inalienable rights over the rights of the State and the people as a collective, a whole. The fact that no individual could be imposed upon by the State without good cause and due process changed the entire system of government in America compared to what had preceded it in every other nation on earth. Today, when our Constitution and the civil liberties it recognizes are under attack as never before by 'big government', it's worth remembering that those civil liberties are neither conferred by nor subject to the purview of the State. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not grant us anything in the way of civil liberties, but acknowledge that such liberties pre-exist them, and are not subject to abrogation.

235 years ago today, our Founding Fathers freely chose to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" in support of the Declaration of Independence. It might not be a bad idea for all of us to do the same, to and for and with each other, in solemn agreement that the rights, liberties and freedom they won for us, in the words of a later President, "shall not perish from the earth" . . . despite the seeming determination of a rapacious, over-large and self-interested national government (which would surely have been rejected with horror by those same Founding Fathers) to override them at its convenience.

Peter