Because they believed in God-given rights.
American
colonists were far more educated than most of the world. In 1776, the American
colonies had nine well-established colleges. These included Yale, Harvard,
Dartmouth, William and Mary, the College of Philadelphia (University of
Pennsylvania), College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia
University), Queen's College (Rutgers), and College of Rhode Island (Brown
University). Beyond formal education, life-long self-learning was fashionable,
and most of the Founders were familiar with the teachings of Locke, Hume,
Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.
Benjamin
Franklin said, “Our people … were observed by strangers to be better instructed
and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other
countries.” Ben should know. He built an enormous fortune selling products that
required a literate audience.
The
Declaration of Independence lists the particulars for the revolt, but the
overarching reason was that the British monarchy believed the colonists were mere
subjects. Under English common law, anyone born within the King’s dominions was a natural-born subject, not a citizen, of the British Crown. This lack of
British citizenship chafed the American colonists. They viewed themselves as
English and took the Enlightenment's definition of “natural rights” seriously.
As Boston tour guides are fond of saying, the colonists never yelled, “The
British are coming,” because they believed themselves to be British.
Almost
three years prior to the Declaration, the Boston Tea Party made rebellion the
topic of conversation at the dinner table, in taverns, and in churches. The
battle cry was “No taxation without representation!” Today, we naively assume
the colonists were angry about taxes, but the operative part of that slogan was
the last two words. That’s what got their ire up.
The
British were on top of the world. The popular patriotic song of the day, Rule Britannia, made that clear. Englishmen had
rights, limited at the time, but those rights were sacrosanct. Even these
limited rights were not bestowed upon the colonists. Propertied English males
could vote for a person to represent them in the halls of government, but the
powers-that-be refused to bestow that same right to colonists. Thus, no
representation.
The irony
is that even without representation in Parliament, the colonists enjoyed more
personal liberty than their English counterparts. To have properly functioning
colonies three thousand miles away from the mother country, the colonists were
allowed to make many of their own rules through locally elected legislatures.
The colonists had developed a taste for self-government and preferred to be somewhat independent of the rulers of the British Empire. Edicts that sailed
in from across the Atlantic were more than annoying. The colonists grew
increasingly enraged with the palpable disrespect they received from London.
Two examples illustrate this point.
The view
was different from London, of course. The rulers of the British Empire saw the
colonists as getting a free ride. The great British Navy kept the seas safe for
New England ships, and the mercantilist Parliament regulated trade, allowing
the American maritime industry to prosper. To keep the colonies safe from
foreign invasion, England built forts and posted troops throughout their North
American holdings. The French and Indian War caused a major drain on the
British treasury. Parliament looked at these costs and saw colonials acting
like ungrateful, spoiled children who had grown large enough to pay their own
way.
Were the
colonists’ feelings hurt because the English refused to allow them to join
their club as full members? Not exactly. Their belief in self-governance was
heartfelt and part of their character. The American Revolution may have been
sparked by an overbearing crown, but the fuel was an educated populace that was
experienced in home rule. The edicts from England rubbed the colonists the
wrong way because they were used to making decisions for themselves and had
adopted Enlightenment teachings, which held that self-governance was a natural
right.
Or as
Thomas Jefferson powerfully put it, “Governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
There were two things I really liked about this book. First,
it was titled A Patriot's History of Globalism, and that is exactly what it was. It
starts with monarchical globalism and moves through militaristic, diplomatic,
scientific, financial, medical, and finally spiritual, as represented by Earth
worship. All these overlapped; none succeeded. All of which builds to an
optimistic final chapter, which demonstrates that globalism is in decline.
Thus, the book is also true to its subtitle. A nonfiction book that delivers on its title. How often does that occur?
One concern I have about the final chapter's optimism is the series of seven preceding schemes. When an approach to global domination fails, the power-crazed just slip right over to another game plan. You can’t defeat these people. They are relentless. The Founders understood this characteristic of autocrats and designed a government that would hem them in with a constitutional republic that limited power, balanced it among the branches of government, and checked its exercise.
As
proof that the Founders understood globalists, Gouverneur Morris, the stylist
or “Penman of the Constitution,” said during the Constitutional Convention,
"As to those philosophical gentlemen, those Citizens of the World as they call themselves, I did not wish to see any of them in our public Councils. I do not trust them. The men who can shake off their attachments to their own Country can never love any other.”
I concur with Morris. I do not trust them. I have never heard a globalist explain the structure of this governing body of an entire planet. It certainly won’t be modeled after the United States system. It has been around 250 years, and nobody has copied the most successful republic in history. In an autocrat’s eyes, our Constitution has two fatal flaws. The “checks and balances” thing throws a monkey wrench in authoritative control. The second flaw is that our system is far too simple for a bureaucrat. (The rejected European Constitution was 66,647 words in English; more than ten times the length of the U.S.A Constitution.) To a globalist, laws must be so complex only ordained priests can interpret them.
You know, “trust the experts.”
"It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded… merely as curiosities in glass cases."
So spoke Harry Truman about the Declaration of Independence. He also called it a “supreme expression of our profound belief.” How did this world-shattering document come about? From the pen of one man, Thomas Jefferson. On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The committee was composed of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman.
One of these five was a renowned writer. That person did not write the Declaration of Independence. Often, we forget that Benjamin Franklin was a bestselling author. For nearly thirty years, only the Bible outsold Poor Richard’s Almanac; his Autobiography has never been out of print, and his articles made the Pennsylvania Gazette the most successful newspaper in the colonies. Franklin, however, declined to draft the declaration, purportedly due to poor health, so the committee asked the thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson to draft it.
In less than three weeks, Jefferson presented the committee with this historic document. For the most part, the committee accepted the Declaration as drafted, except that Franklin made some subtle but important revisions. For example, Jefferson had written “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” which Franklin revised to “self-evident.” Some have suggested that Franklin was pushing the text toward the analytic empiricism of David Hume, but it’s more likely that the master editor was wordsmithing for a more graceful rhythm to the words.
On June 28th, the Committee of Five reported out the declaration to Congress, and they began arguing over every sentence, making thirty-nine revisions. Thankfully, Congress left the preamble alone, so altering the list of grievances did not dilute the earth-shattering ideas in the first two paragraphs. Although Jefferson never uttered a word of complaint, he fumed at the incessant meddling.
Jefferson reported afterward that Franklin admitted he avoided drafting papers for committee review. You can almost hear the seventy-year-old patriarch chuckling as he gives this advice to the young Virginian. According to Jefferson, Franklin told him the following story.
"When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, ‘John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,’ with a figure of a hat subjoined. But thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word ‘Hatter’ tautologous, because followed by the words ‘makes hats,’ which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word ‘makes’ might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy them, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words for ready money were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, ‘John Thompson sells hats.’ ‘Sells hats!’ says the next friend. ‘Why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?’ It was stricken out, and ‘hats’ followed it as there was one painted on the board. So, the inscription was reduced ultimately to ‘John Thompson,’ with the figure of a hat subjoined."
A few have criticized the Declaration for failing to present new concepts. Five centuries after Magna Carta (1215), Englishmen had gradually gained individual rights, and by the late eighteenth century were exercising some self-government. The King and nobility still wielded substantial power, but Parliament -- especially the elected House of Commons -- had gained authority. Meanwhile, toward the end of the period, Enlightenment thinking began to influence those outside the aristocracy. Enlightenment thinkers challenged religious, governmental, and social norms, arguing that mankind not only possessed the capacity for self-government but had it as a natural right.
The Enlightenment turned the world upside down. Instead of the divine right of kings, individuals were endowed with God-given rights. The Founders, thoroughly schooled in this doctrine, knew their words were not breaking new ground but were doing something far more powerful: putting those revolutionary concepts into practice.
This understanding was shared by the committee. In 1822, John Adams answered a query about the Declaration of Independence:
"As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before. The substance of it is contained in the declaration of rights and the violation of those rights in the Journals of Congress in 1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, composed by James Otis, as I suppose, in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel Adams."
Jefferson himself told Henry Lee:
"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."
The Declaration of Independence never claimed to plow new ground, but it did an exceptional job of articulating the Enlightenment vision. Or, in Jefferson’s words, made the Enlightenment ideas plain and firm. Some claim the best-known sentence in the English language is, “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.”
Thomas Jefferson rightly deserves enormous recognition and praise for writing an eloquent and powerful expression of this revolutionary concept, but it was an idea more universal than one man -- or even one generation.
(This article was originally published in the American Thinker.)
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| The American Exceptionalism Series Read all about it! |
“It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded… merely as curiosities in glass cases.”
So spoke Harry Truman about the Declaration of Independence. He also called it a “supreme expression of our profound belief.” How did this world-shattering document come about?
Read all about it at the American Thinker
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| American Exceptionalism |
We were cleaning our basement when we came across some 1976 Bicentennial material that my wife's mother had carefully stowed away. Here is an example.
This 1976 calendar was given away free at Exxon stations. The promotional calendar was distributed at the beginning of the bicentennial year and must have been planned months in advance. She also preserved Founding Father playing cards that were given away at Bob's Big Boy. Lots and lots of other company-sponsored items were given away free to celebrate our country's anniversary and the Declaration of Independence. (My mother-in-law was a very nice person, but cheap. She valued free stuff.)
Google ExxonMobil for our 250th celebration. Crickets. Same for most of Corporate America. Our USA-based companies have found something else to celebrate. Something else to take pride in.
When did patriotism go out of fashion? When did patriotism become scorned? When did we forget, or never learn, the significance of our Founding and the Declaration of Independence?
Not only when, but who decided? Who stole our American heritage?
The best way to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America is to replace who with we ... We the People.
“The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable, and perhaps the world has lost little it should regret. But the origins of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived.” —James Madison
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| American Exceptionalism Series |
