These notions couldn’t be stopped

Published 7:29 am Friday, July 4, 2008

America is the “Land of the Free.” Today, we recall the first few paragraphs of Declaration of Independence, a document that began a nation and a global movement away from totalitarianism and toward democracy. Notions such as equal rights and liberty began as whispers but once uttered could not be contained. The history of these United States are marked with struggles for these freedoms for everyone. Some argue Americans have become less free as the country ages. Nay, the people are more free than ever yet continue to struggle for equal rights — rights that have their roots in a document called the Declaration of Independence:

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

In Congress, July 4, 1776,

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The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

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.

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.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.