The greatest time bomb ever laid beneath history was laid 238 years ago today.

[kpete]

OUR MOST IMPORTANT STRUGGLE REMAINS 238 YEARS LATER: "TO BE SELF EVIDENT"
By Charles P. Pierce on July 4, 2014



The greatest time bomb ever laid beneath history was laid 238 years ago today:

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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

They knew they were doing it. They knew a lot of things, of course. They knew they were committing what the entire rest of the human history would have reckoned to be treason. They knew they were formally declaring war, although there is no declaration of war present anywhere in the document they signed, and they knew the formidable nature of the military arrayed against them. But they also knew they were committing themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, to a constant redefinition and expansion of the nature of freedom. They knew they were leaving themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, wide open to charges that they had pronounced a cause of rebellion while guilty of the same offenses against Nature and Nature's god of which they were accusing a feckless monarch and his blundering ministers. (At his most acidic, Samuel Johnson wondered, ""How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?&quot The New England merchants and smugglers knew it. The Pennsylvania Quakers knew it. The slaveholders of the South knew it, and they knew it so well that they had a passage critical of the institution of slavery excised from the document that was written by one of their own. But they knew it anyway, and they were scared to the depths of their sin-wracked souls. The document was silent on slavery, but slavery was assumed in every syllable.

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The explosive in that time bomb is not yet exhausted. There have been small detonations throughout our history. You can hear them every time freedom is extended and every time it changes form as it moves forward. There also have been small detonations throughout our history every time we fell short of the promise of those words, the promise that is the essential charge in the device.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the jailers of Guantanamo, from the keepers of the black sites, from those willing to hand our inalienable rights to faceless men in the cubicles of the intelligence bureaucracy? How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from paymasters of torturers?

The time bomb laid beneath history 238 years ago is a time bomb of pure conundrum, and the people who put it there knew that the essential engine of democracy is paradox, noble bluffs to be called, high-minded promises in savage conflict with each other. And they knew that, too, all of them, when they piled the dirt atop the time bomb they had laid beneath history, wiped their hands daintily, and walked away.

Happy Independence Day.

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MORE (just beautiful...):
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Fourth_Of_July

[Uncle Joe]

1. I believe what the Founders knew above all else was that the United Colonies and then United States

needed to remain united.

All 13 colonies needed to stick together in order to survive past the rebellion against the most powerful empire on Earth and then in turn survive past infancy as a new nation.

http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote71.htm

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

At the signing of the Declaration of Independence

Unity was the prime directive, as expressed by the elder of the day Benjamin Franklin the Founders knew that the colonies and then new born states were too immature to deal with abolition at those critical stages without tearing itself apart.

They knew they were doing it.They knew a lot of things, of course. They knew they were committing what the entire rest of the human history would have reckoned to be treason. They knew they were formally declaring war, although there is no declaration of war present anywhere in the document they signed, and they knew the formidable nature of the military arrayed against them. But they also knew they were committing themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, to a constant redefinition and expansion of the nature of freedom. They knew they were leaving themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, wide open to charges that they had pronounced a cause of rebellion while guilty of the same offenses against Nature and Nature's god of which they were accusing a feckless monarch and his blundering ministers. (At his most acidic, Samuel Johnson wondered, ""How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?&quot The New England merchants and smugglers knew it. The Pennsylvania Quakers knew it. The slaveholders of the South knew it, and they knew it so well that they had a passage critical of the institution of slavery excised from the document that was written by one of their own. But they knew it anyway, and they were scared to the depths of their sin-wracked souls. The document was silent on slavery, but slavery was assumed in every syllable.

In short the Founders believed in the document (s) Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution as leaving the nation a path open to change, grow and evolve.

What they didn't believe was that in some cases they personally and in most cases the young nation could survive that kind of radical change from the start, the nation wasn't ready, but I believe they thought at some point in the future it would be.

While their personal legacies were important to them, survival of the democratic process (albeit imperfect) for change was the prime directive.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[kpete]

2. Wow, Uncle Joe

thanks for your delicious reply

a path open to change, grow and evolve

and

True patriotism isn’t simply about securing our borders from outsiders. It's about coming together for the common good.
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf

[Uncle Joe]

3. I believe Robert Reich was spot on.

Thanks for the link, kpete.

[misterhighwasted]

4. K&R for Necessary Read. Thanks for the post.

Replies to the Article are spot on also. I like this one:

"The loudest yelps come from those who see freedom as zero-sum and thus are hell-bent on denying a precious to anyone but themselves lest they lose the monopoly. Typically, these are the wealthies white men, and the sadly duped (mostly) men who will never get into the exclusive club but will die trying to keep others out."

[Scuba]

5. Rec for the OP and replies.