July 4th: On This the Birthday of Our National Independence and Our Political Freedom

This a monumental birthday. It is the birth of human freedom and individual rights. Our founding fathers were were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action. Ayn Rand wrote, ‘the basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.’

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

An individualist is a man who says: “I will not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone—nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”

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The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

Frederick Douglass spoke of July 4th (1852):

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day—cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. ………

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

We should celebrate and take stock of what we have and what we are losing in the dark days of the Democrat overthrow of our Constitution.

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.

It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders’ motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world.]

— Ayn Rand

Be happy. Be free. Take inventory and gird your loins. We are in for the fight of our lives.

Today is the celebration of freedom, real freedom, individual rights. Regardless of race, religion, creed or color …. freedom and justice for all, equal rights under the law.

“Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army,… pic.twitter.com/VSpVusjBiM

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) July 4, 2023

What the Fourth of July Was Not

By Victor Davis Hanson, July 3, 2023

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.”
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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.
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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.

The new government made, then, no claims that all Americans must be egalitarian. There was no promise that Americans must be equal in all aspect of their lives—or else.

Such mandated sameness might threaten the idea of “liberty,” and the ability of each citizen to pursue one’s own version of happiness.

Nor did the Declaration pledge a common “fraternity.” Americans were under no compulsion to embrace some collective brotherhood or shared orthodox political sentiments.

So Americans would not be ensured an equality of result—or what we may know now as “equity.”

Unlike other revolutionary governments, the founders of America never promised to create utopian “new men” who would become alike in all aspects of their being.

The foundational date of our “new order” was canonized as 1776. Yet note it was not some pretentious Jacobin “Year 1”—as if everything in the past was to be erased.
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Unlike revolutionary France’s 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” the American Declaration was far more modest in its confidence in what government could or should achieve.

Jefferson inserted no such French wording about government power concerning “social distinctions” or “disturbing the public order” or “in proportion to their means.”

Other republics birthed parliamentary systems.

They usually spawned multiple splinter parties. They were characterized by sudden creations and collapses of ruling governments, depending on volatile public mood swings.

Often backroom deals were common to appoint new presidents and prime ministers—or dismiss them.
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Instead, our Constitution, in classical fashion, established a bicameral Congress, an executive president and a supreme court.

Their quite different powers were all checked and balanced by one another.

Then their prerogatives were further limited by a federal system of individual states’ rights to form their own laws not entailed by the Constitution.

Regularly scheduled elections, a formal Bill of Rights, a two-party system, and a single continuous Constitution naturally followed.

Few consensual governments have ever emulated the more difficult American model—and thus so far never achieved a 247-year continuity of a single republican system.

Certainly, Americans went through a variety of crises that challenged the viability of the Declaration—the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the culture war of the 1960s, and the current woke revolution of the 2020s.

Terrible laws of discrimination were and are still sometimes passed contrary to both the Constitution and the Declaration.

But so far, the sparse wording of the Declaration has prevailed.

America’s Constitution was not hijacked by the likes of a French Napoleon.

There has been no Nazi take-over of our democracy as in 1930s Germany.

We have not been plagued by dozens of brief ad-hoc coalition governments akin to Italy’s volatility.

So on this Fourth let us cherish the Fourth of July for what it promised—and what it thankfully did not.

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Reaver Rogue

10 months ago

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-3

Zeus

10 months ago

News Flash: We lost our independence over a century ago.

No? Why do you suppose we don’t have a border? Why do you suppose our currency has been slowly devalued? Why do you suppose we buy and protect our enemy’s oil instead of using our own? Why do you suppose we deported our manufacturing to hostile nations? Why do you suppose the price of everything increased despite every advance in technology? Why do you suppose our education system works against our children? Why do you suppose our children are behind confused, and programmed, and abused, and mutilated, and enslaved to debt more every year? Why do you suppose the press serves the ruling class? Why do you suppose the “war on drugs” never included securing the border? Why do you suppose the greatest beneficiary of all the wars we’ve been in is the same ruling families across the pond that we once separated ourselves from? Why do you suppose the system is rigged to centralize wealth and leverage and power over everything? Why do you suppose we can’t even hold a legitimate election or fix a crooked one?

I see a century of deception and betrayal and theft and mass murder and treason.

Hurrah!

1

Snowedin

10 months ago

In this country anymore, it seems that the progressive,commie, demoncraps, and their handlers do not care what the judges rule. They are doing what they want to destroy America and it’s citizens and turn it into a 3rd world Banana Republic.

1

Walter Sieruk

10 months ago

With this 247th anniversary of the official signing of the declaration of Independence on July 4th. 1776. It’s therefore very good to remember the wisdom of the former United States President, Theodore Roosevelt , who in a speech, rightly, declared “There can be no fifty- fifty Americanism in this country . There is room here for only one hundred percent Americanism, only for those are Americans and nothing else.

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Walter Sieruk

10 months ago

It’s very good that the United States had reached the 247 years anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

By contrast ,it’s terrible that the US has a criminal fraud, Joe Biden, masquerading as America’s President.

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