As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s hard not to get a feeling that there’s a significant cohort of people currently in high political office who would do well to read and actually comprehend what is contained in the document between that preamble that starts with “when in the course of human events” and ends with signatures from representatives of every colony.
The most common misconception is that signing of the Declaration of Independence is the de facto establishment of the United States as a separate nation from Great Britain.
If you consider that the Declaration was signed in the Second Continental Congress over a year after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord which itself was ten years after the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 by Parliament that had unsettled the relations between England and the colonies in America from which things never really recovered, there are arguments to be made that the nation was truly born in the actions of the First Continental Congress and the various resolves and resolutions in various colonies well before the Declaration itself was signed.
The North Carolina flag features two dates referring to two such documents…the date of signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of 20 May 1775 (whose existence is disputed but the Mecklenburg Resolves enacted on 31 May 1775 isn’t!) and the Halifax Resolves of 12 Apr 1776.
But leaving that aside, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is certainly “close enough for government work”!
But I think a lot of people might actually be surprised that so many of the arguments those colonists made as examples of their perceived tyranny of King George III in spite of the fact that the vast majority of the grievances expressed were actually visited upon the colonies by the King’s Board of Trade.
The Board of Trade was hardly as famous or convenient a target as the sovereign and John Adams in particular felt that focusing the ire of the colonists upon a singular target would be far more effective in unifying the colonies into rebelling against the mightiest empire on the planet at the time and the near certainty of military conflict ensuing where most of the odds makers would not have given the colonies great odds of surviving.
What has really struck me these past few weeks is the fervent appearance of celebration of the signing of the Declaration and wrapping the flag round themselves by people who might be very surprised at how applicable more than a few provisions of the Declaration are to the modern day and to their actions in particular in subverting the will and intent if not the wisdom of the Founding Fathers.
So how about we take a look at some of the more strikingly apropos paragraphs from the Declaration and look at them through the lens of the current government’s behaviour, eh?
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 …
Declaration of Independence
One need look no further than the first two sentences right after the preamble and spot a glaring problem that’s very topical right now!
Doesn’t it seem odd to anyone else that some amongst us would celebrate the Declaration with near religious fervour whilst everything they’re doing in government is to remove as many people from participating in the voting process thus preventing the people from choosing the politicians who are supposed to represent their interests rather than the politicians choosing the voters they wish to have?
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
US Constitution — Amendment XIX
Disfranchisement of huge swathes of voters is hardly new and one could argue it was pretty much there from the off…that “all men are created equal” meant that roughly half of the population wasn’t even allowed to vote until 1920…144 years after the signing of the Declaration and 131 after the ratification of the Constitution which was the second attempt at a national governing documents after the failure of the Articles of Confederation.
The disfranchisement didn’t stop there as African-Americans well know through the centuries since the signing of the Declaration!
Whether it was being in a state of enslavement, the explicit denial of citizenship in the appalling decision of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), or the efforts of various states to circumvent various civil rights statutes including of Blacks to vote with the Jim Crow era laws…there have been many efforts to deny Blacks the ballot and the ability to choose their preferred representatives.
It took many decades after yet another dreadful Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) enshrining segregation as long as the standard was separate accommodations were substantially equal which was never reached in practise before the Supreme Court reversed Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
It would take a massive protest movement as well as passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) and several related Supreme Court decisions meant to enforce those acts to finally neuter most of the worst effects of the Jim Crow laws.
So what does it say to you when this recently concluded term of the Supreme Court completed the effective destruction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 started with the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013) eliminating Department of Justice (which in the current administration is no friend to minority voters) clearance of changes to voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination with the decision in Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026) where the court cleared the way for Louisiana to racially gerrymander their congressional map to eliminate one of two “Black opportunity” districts?
Think about what message that sends to the citizens of Louisiana, one-third of whom are Black, that one of the two representatives most likely to understand their lived experience and be receptive to their needs is being redistricted out of office at light speed in a blatantly partisan and racial gerrymander leaving a map with only one Black representative out of six sent to Washington DC in their delegation?
Kind of comes off as a “sucks to be you”, doesn’t it?
Louisiana winning the Callais decision on behalf of aggrieved white voters in an era of unprecedented hyper-partisan and racial gerrymandering to exclude as many congressional districts from being at all competitive contests where the voters have a meaningful say and consent in their governance that the Supreme Court effectively blessed in Callais and Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019) set off the easily predicted firestorm of redistricting that saw Tennessee split majority-Black Memphis in such a way as to eliminate their sole Black representative and you can bet Alabama will love to kill the Black-opportunity districts they were forced to create by Allen v. Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023) where the Northern District of Alabama Federal Court found the maps an unconstitutional racial gerrymander even after the case was remanded post-Callais.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
US Constitution — Amendment XIV, Section 1
Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) should be considered that canary in the coal mine that came exceptionally close to being talons up in the cage.
This is the case that challenged Executive Order 14160 to end birthright citizenship for children born on US soil to parents who are not citizens or permanent residents.
You might be wondering why I’d sound the alarm in a case that was decided in favour of the plain meaning of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment and overturned the executive order as unconstitutional.
That result was never in doubt even with this hyper-partisan Supreme Court where six of the justices (three of whom appointed by President Trump) are more often than not the epitomy of this particular charge that was leveled at King George III in the Declaration of Independence:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Declaration of Independence
[…]
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
If the Supreme Court tried striking down birthright citizenship that is so plainly stated and ratified as part of the Constitution they’re supposedly there to preserve, protect, and defend, I’d imagine that even the President’s most rabid supporters in Congress would not have much of an argument or political support to prevent the Supreme Court from being starved of resources and/or packed with additional justices until they come to heel much as the Supreme Court did in 1937 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened to do just that.
That’s probably going to happen anyway given how exceptionally egregious and blatantly partisan the Roberts Court has been through the years even without the decision in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024) that’s effectively made the President immune from prosecution and accountability for acts that would land any of us lesser mortals into prison for decades…in short, made him king in all but name and dramatically reduced the power of the Article III courts to function as a co-equal branch of government and check on the power of the executive.
What should scare the living daylights out of everyone who cherishes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (I’m sure I’ve heard of that somewhere!) is that the decision was 5-4.
Four justices of the Supreme Court were perfectly happy with the proposition that the Constitution does not mean what it plainly says!
If those Justices can blatantly ignore their primary duty, especially when several of them have been known to espouse “originalist” and “textualist” views of Supreme Court review of cases and laws in light of the Constitution, that’s truly terrifying to the notion that we have a functioning Supreme Court that acts independently of the political will of the President.
When two branches are thus already suborned and Congress has proven itself ineffectual and unwilling to properly check the unconstitutional actions of the others, then there’s the bit of the Declaration of Independence that those who have been acting very poorly in their high offices they might just want to pay real close attention to:
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.
Declaration of Independence
Somehow I doubt that the people for whom this humble missive is intended are considering the consequences of their actions in light of a 250 year-old document that was used to violently assert their independence from a government that they’d found not only to be tyrannical but also completely dismissive of their grievances and needs.
Remember this, take it to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain — “The Czar’s Soliloquy”
I love my country and always have and I always will until that day where I have no more breaths in me nor words and thoughts to share.
But never have I thought of Mark Twain’s warning that my cousin Hannah’s mother reminded me of this morning more than I have these past few years and the last couple of weeks of this term of the Supreme Court in particular.
The powers that seek to divide us so that they may rule us without the legitimacy and consent that is our birthright in the Declaration and the Constitution should be resisted even if it should cost our very lives.
Those many generations who have fought so hard and in many cases died to preserve the freedoms we often take for granted would move heaven and earth if they could to right the many wrongs with our current government that seems hell-bent on enriching itself and entrenching itself in power in such anti-American and anti-democratic ways as we’ve not seen in a long time.
But they can’t.
So it falls to us to take up the fight they cannot and even though we may lose many battles along the way, I firmly believe that the vast majority of the American people who remember the things that made us a people worth saving and the examplar of a representative democracy to the world will once again establish that more perfect union envisioned by the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
US Constitution
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of a document that was at the start of the journey of a nation that no one expected to last five years much less many times that, let us not forget the warning contained within it’s elegant script and not allow those who claim to cherish America but clearly can’t stand Americans to prevail.
With so much at stake, we cannot fail at the task that falls to us!
Happy Independence Day and may it be the inspiration to declare your own independence from those who would seek to cloak themselves in the flag and the symbols of our republic for their own selfish aims.