Celebrating the first post-plague Independence Day.
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It's the fourth of july 2021 Independence day. So, of course, I'd like to talk for a few minutes about the ideas and ideals upon which our nation was founded. A lot of folks these days carry around in their pockets copies of the United States Constitution… It's a pretty short document. Fits easily in a pocket But all that Constitution is is the structure we have chosen most recently on which to build our government. We chose that structure after the first one didn't work. The Constitution is simply a machine designed to implement the principles on what which this nation was built. And those principles are stated clearly and simply in a much smaller document, the ratification of which we celebrate today. And you don't need to carry around the whole document, most of it is just a list of grievances. Everything you really need to know about who we are as people, everything you need to know about the justification for our form of government is in the second paragraph. 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. And it then launches into an enumeration of the “abuses and usurpations” That's all there is to it. The reason that we, citizens of the United States, are no longer subjects of the divinely ordained monarch of England is that the King's government was not doing its job. And any people living under a government which is not doing his job may get together as a group and choose to abolish that government. Why? Because governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. Not from some compromise document written in a convention in 1787. Certainly not because some people are born to rule over others. The document states pretty clearly that all are created equal. And that government's power derives from the consent of the governed. (the way we assure that is to hold free and fair elections) And the government's only job is to secure the rights of the human beings which that government governs. That's pretty simple. You don't have to carry a book around in your pocket to understand that is who we are. But I'm glad we have this one day every year designated to celebrate that foundational document. I just wish that every American would take a few minutes between the hotdogs and the fireworks to actually read at least the second paragraph.