Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

When people hear the phrase, “Man’s inhumanity to man,” the one event that comes to mind most often is the holocaust. Yet after a bit of thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that the phrase cannot reference only a single instance in the history of mankind. It is the constant and consistent result whenever a person desires, and gains, power over someone else.

Through all of time, some men have sought to rule and others to live free. Although it’s certain that throughout history there have been a handful of rulers who have ruled to care for those under them, the vast majority have gotten their power, through whatever means, and used it to assert their will over the free will of their subjects.

The desire for and exercise of power simply for the purpose of being in power, does, has, and will always produce more instances of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

Until yesterday, when I would think about the Revolutionary War and the birth of the United States, I always pictured it as an American war. The image in my mind was a group of thirteen colonies fighting against the tyrannical king of England. Only yesterday did I discover that what was in my mind was an incomplete view.

The American Revolution, and the subsequent birth of our country, was more than just an American struggle and an American war. The birth of the United States was, in fact, the culmination of centuries of wars and struggles of all repressed peoples throughout history up until that time. The birth of America was the trial to see if men could actually live free, or if they indeed needed to be bound by rulers who only sought to rule over them and were free to abuse them at will.

So on July 4th, 1776 a group of men gathered to find a way to break free from being subject to a king in an attempt to live free. They wrote what is now known as the Declaration of Independence. Although I’ve known about it, and even have owned a reproduced copy of it for years, I had never really read it until yesterday.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

That paragraph is the opening to the Declaration, but what follows is something that was never heard or seen in a document that was to be a cornerstone of a form of government.

“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.”

On that day in 1776, the American colonies became a place unlike any the world had ever seen. It became a place where people were free.

At least some of the people anyways.

The thing that got me thinking about all of this was the movie Amistad, which I watched yesterday. It is the true story of how a group of people were illegally kidnapped from West Africa back in the 1800’s, and were being brought to America as slaves. During the voyage, the slaves broke free and killed most of the crew of the ship, thus taking it over. However, a Navy survey vessel later discovered them and they were all arrested.

What followed was two years of imprisonment and trials in American courts, as some argued that they were true slaves and as such were the property of their owners and were to be sent back to be killed. Others argued that they were captured illegally and thus were only taking the necessary steps to regain the freedom that was theirs to begin with.

I realized, after watching the movie, that Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. day. Maybe I subconsciously knew that and that knowledge somehow steered my selection at the video store, or perhaps this was merely just a coincidence.

In a way, slavery was a way for even the common man to be king of his own castle. It was a way for them to reintroduce to America the very thing that they fought against England to abolish.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little befuddled when I look at how wise the Founding Fathers were in designing the government, yet even though they declared that “all men are created equal,” they didn’t unanimously do something to put action to that idea when it came to the issue of slavery.

It’s hard for me to see how men who were willing to risk their own lives for the idea that “all men are created equal” could ignore something within their own borders which so obviously goes against that ideal.

But now here we are a couple of hundred years later. Unless they or their parents were immigrants, most of us Americans don’t think at all about the freedom we have. We’re told all of our lives that it is our “right,” and so we don’t give it a second thought. We get caught up in our daily lives and assume that since no one has ever threatened our freedom within our lifetimes, that it will never happen and so we can continue to take that freedom for granted-we can flippantly ignore the gift that we have which so many through the ages have longed and fought and suffered and died for.

It didn’t have to turn out this way. America could have ended up being no different than any other country at that time. We could be living right now without the right to be free, and make our own choices, steer our own destiny, find our own happiness, and take care of those we love.

With the way that everything seems to be politicized these days, it’s very easy to forget what a gift freedom is. It’s easy to take it for granted because we can; we don’t have to be concerned with someone forcibly taking that freedom away.

I’m really not sure what my point to all this was. Maybe I had one and I forgot, or maybe I was just letting out the randomly connected thoughts that were passing through my head. I’m not sure.