From Volume 2, Issue Number 25 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published June 24, 2003
This Week in History

June 30-July 6, 1776

This week we look to that unique, seminal event in world history, the proclamation of the American Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1776. Rather than review, as we did last year,* the sequence of events which led to this Declaration at this time, we will focus on the character of the revolution in statecraft which was being put into effect.

First, focus on the revolutionary character of this document.

Back in 1990, a rather revealing opinion poll was published, in which a copy of the Declaration was circulated house to house in American neighborhoods, with the participants asked what they thought of the content of the document. Shockingly, a large percentage found it to be "communist"!

The fact that Americans today could have such a judgment of their nation's founding document, reveals the fact that they have lost touch with their revolutionary roots. The revolution in thinking about government which the Declaration put into effect is expressed right up front:

"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. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness...."

What is so radical about this that would have led Americans today to find it offensive? The idea of abolishing a government? The idea of the consent of the governed? The idea that all men are created equal?

Shocking, isn't it, that these phrases, which are so often cited ritually as part of our heritage, are seen as a challenge to our actual way of life today? Something is very wrong about the way we think about our republic, if this is the case.

Second, let's hone in on what is the underlying principle behind the Declaration, which makes it so different, and more advanced, than every other national founding document in human history. That principle can be best identified in the concept that all men are created equal, and endowed by God (their Creator) with unalienable rights, which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The principle pointed to here is one specifically identified with the Platonic German philosopher-jurist-scientist Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, whose ideas had a major, but usually unacknowledged, influence in shaping the American Republic, against the concepts of the much-touted English philosopher John Locke. Leibniz's philosophy was based on the idea of man created in the image of God, and thus endowed with reason. Man's fulfillment, therefore, Leibniz said, was to achieve happiness, which he defined as a state of wisdom, or felicity, in carrying out God's work. In other words, happiness was not momentary pleasure, sensual or otherwise, but fulfilling man's nature as doing good for others.

Yet today, the interpretation of inalienable rights, almost invariably substitutes "property" for the "pursuit of happiness." This is the concept which John Locke, a British official who put forward a Constitution for South Carolina which enshrined chattel slavery, advocated, and it totally coheres with the degraded notion of man which the British imperial system—and many others—demanded. Under the Lockean system, man is out to get, and hold onto, as much property as he can, not to achieve happiness through wisdom, and doing good.

When you confront the idea that our Founding Fathers, of whom Benjamin Franklin, who sat on the committee which was responsible for the Declaration, was the leading one, actually chose the "pursuit of happiness," over "property," you will begin to fathom how far we have degenerated today in our understanding of our revolution. Ours was a revolution against the degradation of man, on behalf of all mankind—and it is long past time we returned to those principles of the Declaration of Independence which made us great, and uniquely can make us fulfill our mission again today.

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