Hopefully you are all familiar with the founding documents
of this nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and particularly today the
Declaration of Independence. When I was in college, I was mortified when in
literature class, the students were required to read the Declaration and most of
them expressed surprise about what was actually in it. So I am not sure I can
expect you to know that it says the
following:
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.
To break it down a little bit, we start with the idea that
these are self-evident truths. Of course when they said it the overwhelming
majority of the world’s governments did not recognize these “truths” and even
today I am not sure a majority of the world’s population lives under a
government that respects those truths. I think the best way to understand those
words, then, is that to all good people, these were self-evident truths.
There will always be tyrants, great and petty, and their Brownshirts, who do not
believe that these are self-evident truths, but there is a point where you just
say, “you know what? If you can’t even agree on this, then it is not a
reflection on the truth of the sentiment, so much as a reflection on your
character.” If these truths are not self-evident to you, it’s an indictment on
you.
No comments:
Post a Comment