Being Honest With Ourselves 250 Years After July 4, 1776

When we want to believe a “truth” we can deceive ourselves better than any con-man can. We want to believe in the America of the dream. We want to tell our kids America is great. We want it so bad we lie to ourselves about truths that stare us in the face. So the lie becomes the truth.

The Declaration of Independence is a statement of principles about government and the human rights of people that the folks that won the American Revolution proclaimed to the world were the ideas of America they were willing to fight and die for. Once they won the Revolution, the harder work of applying those principles began, and opposition went from the Tories supporting the English Empire to domestic opponents with their own interests and goals. That’s the human condition.

The principles declared are pretty simple. First, the human rights of the people come from being a person, and are granted each person by nature’s god. These human rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” exist before government (there are other human rights not named that are included).

The people can form a government to protect those rights. A government formed by the people must have the “consent” of the people or the government is not legit. (Without consent any government is a form of slavery.) If the government formed by the people with their consent later becomes destructive of those rights, the government is no longer legit and it is the “right or the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.”

Then the people make a new government that better protects those rights. The law making power is in the people and they only delegate it to government so long as government protects the human rights of the people and no longer.

Where do these principles stand as the 250th Birthday of the Declaration, July 4, 2026, approaches? A candid, honest assessment is not promising.

Consent of the governed? Many people say, “What can I do, I can’t do anything, the government does what it wants and I can’t change it.” If true, consent of the governed does not exist.

Voting still exists. However, Congress in 1910........

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