So the next few bits of the Declaration are ultimately a rehash of Humanist philosophy from Locke’s Rights of Man to Rousseau’s Social Contract.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.

In that one sentence, the Signers completely disavowed any concept of divine government. There was to be no Noblesse Oblige, no Divine Right. The existence of government relies entirely on the People’s need to secure the rights that are native to the human spirit, and may exist only as long as the People, who created it, allow it to exist.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or 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.

Humans have two attributes that propelled a plainsland ape from being lion kibble to becoming the single most successful species in the 4 billion year history of the world. We like to associate with other humans, and we can think—and communicate—in abstract symbols. We engage both of these attributes when we create a government, because we have created a small, abstract group that has authority over the individuals of a larger group.

But the abstract group is owned and controlled by the larger group, and all of the individuals therein, have the right and the responsibility of ensuring that government obeys the laws and ethics of the larger group. This is a basic foundation of American life; it’s something that we are taught in subtle, iconic ways from the cradle to the grave.

It is the single key to the American mindset, because we make no distinction between a government and its people. Why? Because the government is the tool and the responsibility of the people. If a government is evil or destructive, then it is the responsibility of every man, woman and child in that nation to change it.

The saddest, most aggravating part of that is the surprising number of Americans who seem to forget this one basic truth. Every person who refuses to vote, every person who closes their mind and ears to political discussion and debate, everyone who doesn’t scream in outrage when a person in power commits an outrage, is complicit in the creation of a dictatorship.

Look at America as a farm. Everyone needs to help pull the weeds; it doesn’t matter if those weeds are dandelions or daisies, they’re choking out the life of the crops and that means they’re destroying the farm. That means your destroying the farm. Enjoying the way the parachute-seeds from dandelion puffballs fly is no excuse; neither is loving the simple beauty of a field of daisies. Every puffball is about a hundred new dandelions, and every field of daisies is a field that’s not feeding the farm.

Anything wrong in government, especially those things that come close to what we want, has to be inspected and discussed, objectively, dispassionately, and with an open mind. The USAPatriot Act addressed fears that a lot of Americans had, but it opened unbelievable and nearly overpowering doors to government power that should never even exist. The ACA addressed the growing crisis of medical treatment in the country, but it did so by handing out corporate favors and intruding on personal rights in ways never before seen. Both laws have their proponents and detractors. Both laws are broken and need to be fixed or repealed. Turning a blind eye to that fact just lets the weeds grow.

When someone complains about NSA phone-tapping or unlimited interment in Club Gitmo, it is everyone’s responsibility to ask the hard questions. “Can we do the same thing without such extreme measures? If not, is our safety worth our liberty? Is a nation where boarding an airplane is like a border crossing in Occupied Europe, and having a common name can relegate you to the bus station even really free?”

Same thing with the ACA. It’s not a matter of how many people were driven to bankruptcy before its passage. You have to ask the questions that trouble you, even if you support the overall idea of the act. “Why has nothing been done to regulate hospital billing, or the cost of medications and supplies? Why are prescription drugs advertised on national TV? It’s one thing to say that everyone should have access to health insurance but why does that mean everyone must be insured? Does a Right to Life presuppose a Right not to Die? Should it? Ever?” Ask and keep asking until the answers are the ones you like.

Because governments are instituted among men to protect those rights, but it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. The rights are all of ours.

So is the responsibility.

I’m going to indulge my arrogance and pretend I know better than others. It’s a thing I do, sometimes, because my head is full of thoughts and I have to shove them out like a hoarder needs to shove the debris out of his home, if only to make room for more. So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to parse the Declaration of Independence. Saturday is Independence Day, so it’s a good time to remind people why we felt we needed to be our own country, and some of the ideals we hoped the new one would espouse.

Actual size.

A lot of people forget that, while the Declaration is definitely one of the founding documents of our nation, nothing in it, except the Declaration of Independence from the British Empire has the force of law. All of the lofty phrases and brilliant ideas are statements of philosophy only. Ways for the drafters to lay down, on paper, the driving principles they hoped the new nation would embrace and embody. So, let’s get started:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In these days of no-fault divorces and lifelong relations dissolved over Facebook comments, it’s hard to remember that, once upon a time, it was considered unthinkably rude to close the door on a relationship without explaining why it had to end. The Signers of the Declaration were mindful of this, and drew up this outline of grievances to show the world that they were not merely petulant children using the threat of independence to get special treatment for their colony.

This was the Second Continental Congress, and both this one and its predecessor had sent letters of redress to the Crown and to Parliament. Shots had already been fired in anger before this Congress met, and, even though they agreed to organize a defensive force under George Washington, they still hoped, at first, that there might be some sort of reparation.

This was a Dear John letter. “Dear England, We’re sorry. We tried, we really did, but it’s just not working out. This is why we have to leave. If the reasons sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same things we’ve been saying for five years.”

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,

Let’s take a moment, here to snuff out a stupid debate I’ve heard from time to time. All of these men, with the possible—possible—exception of Benjamin Franklin, were Christians. They were not modern evangelicals, but they did believe in, and at least give lip service to, the Christian God. Most of them held a Deist version of the faith, that is they believed that God was out there, somewhere, probably, but didn’t consider God to be concerned with individual lives, or even the current state of the world.

There were a few reasons for this. The Calvinists among them believed that God had set everything in motion on an imperturbable path and every choice, every decision was already written down and accounted for. For the most part, others believed that, in order to be worthy of God’s Great Kingdom, they had to show that they could handle man’s little kingdom well enough. They all thought about God, but in an abstract, the way people who live in Eastern Colorado think of the mountains that loom ever on the western horizon.

And they were from a number of different denominations. Most were Anglican (or Episcopal, if you prefer), some were Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian. A few were Catholic. Franklin was raised a Friend (Quaker), but his writings at the time suggest that he was agnostic, at best.

I was also a nudist, a polyamorist, and the inventor of pimp shirts.

Excepting the Anglicans, most of them (or their ancestors) came—or were sent—to the Colonies because they were either persecuted or disenfranchised at home. That is why God is mentioned exactly twice in the entire document, and in vague, general terms.

Each man had his own belief, but however deeply he felt it, he felt that his needs, and the needs of his neighbors and country, were better served by his allowing that others might see the world differently. Even if he thought they were wrong in their faith.

that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Earlier drafts replace “pursuit of happiness” with “security of property.” It’s open for debate whether Jefferson changed it on his own, or whether the other drafters thought mentioning property so directly was crass. In any case, the vague, but lofty, phrase is the one we have.

The first two seem simple enough by comparison. Human life is marked as sacrosanct from the first book of the Bible. The first Sin may have been Disobedience, but the first Crime was Murder. These men firmly and deeply believed that it was morally and religiously wrong for one man to kill another, without cause, And even more so for a government to do the same.

But these men weren’t naïve, either. They knew they were entangled in a bloody war with potentially disastrous consequences. Several battles had already been fought, most notably at Breed’s Hill and at Lexington and Concorde. Even as they argued over the placement of commas, Washington was beginning preparations to meet a massive landing at Manhattan. They knew that all men die. They also knew that sometimes, men’s lives had to be taken.

What they meant by a right to Life was that no government had the right to round up “instigators” and hang them without a trial, that assassination of political or philosophical enemies—whether with a sniper’s bullet or an explosive-laden drone—didn’t hold water no matter how many times you shouted “clear and present danger.”

What?

You have the Right to Life. Every person has the right to expect that, as long as they obey the rules that allow humans to live together, they will not have their life taken from them by their government or their countrymen.

By the same token, Liberty is also not as easy as it seems. The Feudal system was not that far gone in England, and it thrived, in one form or another, in Ireland, France, and Central and Eastern Europe. Liberty, for these men didn’t mean Licentiousness. It didn’t even mean the amazing array of rights and privileges we modern westerners take for granted every day.

For them, Liberty was a simple thing. It was the right to move about and establish a family, or a business. It was the right to speak your mind about the state of things, and to meet with others who agreed or disagreed with you. It was the right to know you couldn’t be imprisoned for your faith, or your family’s name, or because you fell on hard luck. Liberty, for the drafters of the Declaration, was freedom from literal, unbending chains.

“But what about slavery?” you ask. That’s a tough and troubling question, and it was one many members of the Congress wrestled with at the time and for years to come, most notably Jefferson. He was caught between the mill and the millstone. He hated slavery, had written against it many times, but he owned slaves, because his wealth and livelihood, and that of his children, depended on a system where slavery was not only widespread, but necessary for success.

Others, especially those delegates who were Friends, had similar morally and ethically shattering concerns. How could they speak so blithely about the “unalienable right to liberty” when thousands of men were deprived of that very liberty every day.

Sadly, sometimes morality has to bow to reality. Jefferson never freed his slaves in his lifetime for the same reason that the parts of the Declaration that mention slavery were excised. All of the money, and most of the population, at the time of the Signing, was in the South. New York was staunchly Loyalist, and no one believed that setting the seat of government there was going to change more than a few, easily swayed, minds. They needed the South if they were going to succeed in their rebellion, and the South came with baggage. Baggage that would eventually nearly destroy us.

Like marrying a K–you know what, you get the drift.

Finally, we have “the pursuit of happiness”. It’s a phrase, not a word. As I mentioned, above, the original phrase was “security of property.” Like the other two unalienable rights, the original term is reinforced in the Bill of Rights, and given the force of Law, but the final term?

And it’s the pursuit of happiness. Odd that the drafters don’t say that everyone has a right to be happy, only the right to pursue happiness. Like Liberty, this one needs to looked at with a sideways eye.

It may just be that they knew that some people aren’t going to be happy, and raising the idea of universal happiness to the status of unalienable right was a little too hippy trippy even for avid students of the Enlightenment. Maybe it comes down to the fact that bad luck is going to happen, but you have the right to take your chances.

Maybe it was code. Speaking of property as a desirable thing is crass, but all of these men were either self-made or only one or two generations from those who were. Maybe “pursuit of happiness” means the right to invest, to own property and know it is secure, to pass your wealth on to your progeny. Maybe “pursuit of happiness” really means freedom from imposed misery.

More tomorrow.

Just for grins, I’ve decided to reduce my thought on the Gun Control argument to a conversation between cavemen.

Boz: Grok! You must give up bow. It dangerous. Crazy-eyes kill all of Bag-of-Cats Clan!

Grok: What that got to do with Grok? Grok not kill no one.

Boz: Grok not need bow. Bow dangerous. Grok give up bow.

Grok: Grok need bow.

Boz: What for Grok need bow?

Grok: For hunt.

Boz: Grok not hunter. Grok till fields. Hard Rock Clan do hunting for tribe.

Grok: Bunnies eat crops in field. Grok kill bunnies. Plus Bunnies are delicious.

Boz: Grok not need hunt. Hard Rock Clan hunt.

Grok: Grok need bow for protection.

Boz: Hard Rock Clan protect.

Grok: Hard Rock Clan not in field when Boz till. Big cat come to field to eat bunnies. Him not mind Grok salad for side dish.

Boz: Grok ever see big cat in fields?

Grok: Once. Not in fields. Far away. But seen tracks and big cat poop in field.

Boz: Hard Rock Clan protect field.

Grok: If Hard Rock Clan got all bows, what happen if Hard Rock Clan think Grok Cave nice or Grok Woman? What Grok do then?

Boz: Hard Rock Clan not do that.

Grok: Pointed-Stick Clan of Far-river tribe do exactly that.

Boz: Not the same. Anyway, what you do against whole Hard Rock Clan? You only one.

Grok: You take bows from others?

Boz: Me start with You.

Grok: Then me not only one.