In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
Calvin Coolidge, July 5, 1926
Each year after lunch on the Fourth, clan McClarey gathers together to read out loud The Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is not a mere historical artifact, some sort of feel good document that we salute as a patriotic symbol, and then promptly dismiss. It is filled with ideas, some of the most truly revolutionary ideas that have ever been proclaimed on this planet, and they still remain so 237 years later. So blow the dust off it, read it, think about it, argue about it. That is the best way for all Americans to truly observe Independence Day.
Thank You Donald!
Blessed INdependence Day to you and yours.
Same to you Philip!
Civics. It is a course sorely missing in most schools.
It is not Social Studies. It is not History. it isn’t Law or some curious combination of the three or a primer to them.
Civics used to be a separate and independent subject and our studies in Social Studies, History, and Law at American schools do not cover the materialst that used to be studies as Civics with the depth required for Americans to exercise their rights and privileges.
TAC comes closer to the study of Civics – through the curiously intertwined discussions – than any elementary or high school class taught in the schools I know of.
Too bad it is no longer law (and hasn’t been since the Constitution invalidated it in 1796).
We need a new one.
The Declaration of Independence has never been invalidated. It is much more important to all Americans than any mere law, including the Constitution, could ever possibly be:
https://the-american-catholic.com/2011/11/14/33653/
I agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Lincoln as to the central importance of the Declaration in our on-going experiment in self-rule:
“These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: “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.” This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. [Applause.] Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began—so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.”
Modern addendum to Lincoln’s last sentence:
“…unless it interferes with somebody’s sex life. Imbrute away if so.”