Say Anything Blog

The progress of liberty has by no means been a constant in the history of mankind.  All too often the gains made by one generation are lost by a subsequent generation.  Worse, in almost all cases, those subsequent generations choose to abandon liberties paid for with the blood of their forefathers.

Eleven score and twelve years ago this day…

...our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.¹

The blood price of those liberties was paid up front.  Their preservation has required the same blood price, which has been paid forward by generation after generation.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.²

That blood price is being paid even now, far from our shores, for generations yet unborn.

The ideal for which this blood is being, and has been, shed, for which patriots have fought, bled, and died, is this:

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, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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.³

The debt which all Americans owe is the preservation of those ideals.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.⁴

It is our duty.

Hat Tip: Powerline

¹ Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln, delivered 19 November 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, PA.

² Thomas Jefferson, letter to W. S. Smith, 13 November 1787.

³ Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and the Congress of the United States of America, 4 July 1776.

⁴ Speech on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by Calvin Coolidge.