A Fourth of July for the World

The Fourth of July has a meaning far beyond the American border. The Declaration of Independence was an historic break with virtually all previous human history.For most of history, societies were run by the strongest, toughest, and most ruthless leaders. When they could, these leaders turned personal authority into a system they could pass on to their children. Suddenly, bosses became kings, and people grew up expecting to be subservient.Royalty understood the importance of cultural values and myths reinforcing power. The right to rule came from God to the anointed king. Then the king dispensed power as he saw fit. Individual citizens had only the rights lent to them by the king — and the king could take them back at any time.In the English system, the absolute power of kings began to be eroded when King John succeeded Richard the Lion Heart as king. John was a weak leader, and he ultimately found his key leaders, the barons, rebelling against his endless demands for more money.At Runnymede in 1215, King John met with the barons who had collected in rebellion against him. As a sign of the depth of hostility, they deliberately met on a field so muddy that they could not start fighting even if they wanted to. The King was bitter at having to make his power conditional — requiring approval by a council of barons.For the next 560 years, there was a slow evolution toward a system in which the king’s power was limited by the combination of elected officials in Parliament and the inherited positions in the House of Lords. While the king remained extraordinarily powerful, he was to some degree bound by the law which had evolved for half a millennium.The American Founding Fathers were vividly aware of the evolution of power in Britain. They were also students of the Jewish, Greek, and Roman systems of law and power. They felt that they had an opportunity to take the next step in human self-government. Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, detail. Via Wikimedia CommonsIn 1776, Thomas Jefferson was asked to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was in a committee that included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson felt that he was writing an appeal that would be universal. The Declaration is not just narrowly describing the rights of Americans. It is describing in a breathtaking old manner the rights of all mankind. In this Declaration, the Founding Fathers proclaimed that “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.” Four years later, Jefferson described “the Empire of Liberty” as the destiny of America. He did not mean that the United States would extend everywhere. He meant the American ideal of liberty within the Constitution and the rule of law would be extended by people voluntarily. The Founding Fathers sensed that what they were doing was new and universal. This spirit was captured in the motto on the Great Seal: “Novus ordo seclorum.” It means “A new order of the ages.” According to the secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson, who commissioned the seal, it reflected the beginning of a new era.President Lincoln fully embraced this sense of freedom as a universal doctrine. He was born in relative poverty on a farm and taught himself to read by the light of the fireplace. Lincoln personified the everyday man who had been empowered by the Declaration of Independence.If you read Lincoln’s extraordinary Gettysburg Address from this perspective of freedom, you can see how passionate he was and why he was willing to wage war for four years. He truly believed that defeat for freedom in North America would ultimately mean defeat for self-government everywhere.John Trumbull, ‘Declaration of Independence, 1819. Via Wikimedia CommonsAs Lincoln explained, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…. we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”The Russians, North Koreans, Chinese Communists, and the Iranian theocrats are slowly joining together in an alliance against the democracies. Let us take this Fourth of July to remind the world that freedom ultimately wins over tyranny. Let us also resolve that every person in every country is endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. The United States is the world’s advocate of the rights to be free, self-governing, safe, and prosperous. This is why the Fourth of July is a world event — not just an American one.

A Fourth of July for the World

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