The Washington Family Crest
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Posted on 07/02/2006 6:27:38 PM PDT by Pharmboy
I don't know how true the stories are about what Fourth of July celebrations were like in the earlier days of the Republic.
I'm sure I read the Declaration during a high school history class, but it wasn't emphasized, and nobody even hinted to me that it just might have been the most profoundly revolutionary document in human history. I didn't start thinking about it seriously until I was finished with college and trying to figure out whether I wanted to be a politician or a writer.
I have, of course, come to appreciate what the Declaration of Independence means. It provided a philosophical foundation for the country in which I was fortunate enough to have been born – a country in which individual choice was not only respected, it was valued as the key to living a fully human, independent and dignified life.
It was not always thus. Most of the English and the smattering of other Europeans who settled this country during the colonial era had grown up in rigid and stratified societies. At the top was the hereditary monarch, with the mostly hereditary aristocracy just below.
Most people were landless peasants, dependent on wealthy landowners, and those who were craftsmen of various kinds generally adopted the same trade as their fathers before them, or joined guilds that required long apprenticeships and held down competition.
Underpinning this static, hierarchical way of life was a philosophy developed by medieval court philosophers touting the "divine right of kings." The king was said to hold his position as the result of God's will, and rebellion against the king was rebellion against God Himself. And with or without God's blessing, most societies through history, with a few fleeting exceptions,
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The Washington Family Crest
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I doubt it. That and the Constitution used be taught top to bottom...but nowadays, if they are brought up all in Publik schools - it's a twisted version to turn them upside down===
Great site...thanks.
My daughter graduated from a small, private all-girls high school and was required to take a course called "Literature of Protest". Her daddy and I were very tentative about it until we were sent the reading list. First piece of literature they had to read was the Declaration of Independence.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those 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."
Don't you love how it was Unanimous! Meaning everyone was on the same page with the Declaration of Independence!
Those guys were an unbelievable bunch.
Independence! A beautiful word, ESPECIALLY in this day and age!
I often argue with friends that the promoting and spreading ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence should be the United States' single overriding foreign policy objective. Our nation is based on those principles which contain universal rights. I always end up asking the question "Do the rights identified in the Declaration of Independence apply to all men, or just to those fortunate enough to be born in a limited geographic area?" I then provide the answer, "If they do not apply to all men, then the American Revolution was an unjust act."
Ha! You were expecting Abby Hoffman and Karl Marx and got Thomas Jefferson...excellent. And private schools are so much better than public since the parents have much more say in what goes on.
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