Something to Consider

Sometimes the ideas for my blog just pop into my head with no explanation.  Last night we were returning from a wonderful musical performance and these words popped into my mind out of nowhere.  "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.

The words come from the Declaration of Independence.  I had not thought about these words for some time, and I do not know why they came to mind out of nowhere, but they are powerful words, especially the declaration that all men are entitled to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Yet, at the same time, America sanctioned slavery.  We had taken the land from the indigenous people who lived here before us. The rights described spoke of men, not men and women.  

It took a war for America to abolish slavery, and even longer for women to get the vote, but eventually it happened.  As for our treatment of indigenous people, it has remained complicated.

Those drafting the Declaration of Independence were considering what they saw as unacceptable treatment from the King of Great Britain, which they called "injuries and usurpations," such as refusal to "Assent to Laws."  Their list of abuses by the King was pages longer than the Declaration itself.

They declared, "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."  

They acknowledged that such action should not be carelessly undertaken, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government."  What followed was a very long list of the violations made by the King.

Our Founding Fathers did not choose to elect a king.  Instead, they devised a system of divided powers, in which no single branch of the government has entire power.  The idea is that both the house and the senate have different responsibilities, the members of the house elected every two years, while the senators serve for six years.  With such a large nation, it was assumed that their votes would vary from state to state because of the different needs and opinions from the citizens they represented, avoiding block voting.  Abraham Lincoln warned against political parties, recognizing that political parties might form voting blocks, disrupting the benefit of independent states voting for their constitutions rather than as party leadership controlled.  Likewise, the independence of the Supreme Court, following the law rather than politics, would check personal and political influence.  

The wisdom of the Founding Fathers is always "Something to Consider."