Observing US: A column about America, by Marylaine Block originally published by Fox News Online, 1998-2000

#94, July 4, 2000

THE 4TH OF JULY - A CELEBRATION OF IDEAS

by Marylaine Block

You know, what we're celebrating today isn't actually the birthday of our nation, but the birthday of a document, of words on paper that made our nation possible. Alone among nations, the United States is founded not on shared boundaries, not on shared ethnicity, but on ideas. And the ideas in themselves were a revolution.

When Jefferson held it "self-evident, that all men are created equal" he was using a standard trick of writers and debaters - if you lead with a statement that is manifestly untrue in human history, you don't argue it; you just announce it as a given and keep right on going.

He also had to hold it self-evident that men were "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," because the idea made no historical sense. The rest of the world knew perfectly well that those who offended kings could lose their property and life, that heretics could be burned at the stake for choosing the wrong religion, and, that if pursuing happiness meant advancing beyond the class they were born into, no way.

So Jefferson simply declared those to be truths and slid gracefully past them to his real, and genuinely revolutionary, point: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that therefore, citizens have a right to overthrow their government.

Need I say that this idea was not well-received by kings and emperors, who preferred to have their citizens believe that God chose them to rule? And that when the citizens of France in fact overthrew their government and guillotined their king and queen, those in power became a wee bit nervous?

The power of great language is such that Jefferson's words didn't NEED to be historically true. They had the ring of truth because of the widespread Protestant beliefs that we are all equal in the sight of God, and that every person has the right to read and interpret the word of God.

But the Declaration also articulated so profound a vision of a world that SHOULD be, that people believed it and acted on it -- and not just for our revolution against England. Jefferson's words have been used again and again, in the fight against slavery, in the cause of women's equality, and in revolutions throughout the world.

Jefferson's actual justification for the revolution against Great Britain was a lengthy list of offenses by King George. The primary offense was imposing laws and taxes on us without our consent, so when it came time to turn our Declaration into government, our founders gave a representative Congress the power of taxation, to balance the powers given to the President.

His other complaints - trials conducted without juries, troops quartered in our homes without our consent - were dealt with in the Bill of Rights.

Picture for a moment something never before seen in history. The rebels have won, and their first government, the Articles of Confederation, is universally conceded to be too weak. Our founding fathers could have written a constitution that granted them unlimited power over the lives of American citizens.

They chose instead to state in the Bill of Rights all the things that they themselves as leaders of our government could NOT do. They had not overthrown King George just to become King George themselves.

They said our government could not impose a religion on individual consciences; it could not prevent citizens from saying and printing what they wanted, or assembling to express their grievances against the government. It could not barge into the privacy of people's homes without their consent, could not prosecute people without giving them a fair chance to defend themselves.

If their words are grand, it's because these men were grand; they dared to trust us to rule ourselves. Tonight, as we watch fireworks, we should remember that the fire in the sky symbolizes a revolution, not just of guns but of ideas. And we should be grateful our founders, who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the cause of our freedom, HAD sacred honor - and plenty of it.

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