It is always gratifying to read an editorial (July 4) in the Press celebrating the ideals fashioned into the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson assembled all the rationality of the Enlightenment in his statement that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
My critique of your editorial is with your preceding paragraph, however, wherein you say: “America is a nation founded on a notion, birthed by the ideas of liberty and equality.” Is your definition of the word “notion” that it was only a glimpse of an idea that propelled our founders? A general idea, a desired inclination, a whim perhaps? Imaginary, not real or actual? What could you have possibly meant by a “notion” of an idea?
Those who signed that state paper pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, knowing full well that, if caught, they would definitely be hanged as traitors; but they also hoped to walk away from the British Empire without much ado. The problems in Massachusetts were not considered germane to the greater issue of a separation from the mother country.
The American Revolution can be seen as more of a rebellion, certainly; and, in some areas such as New York and New Jersey, a civil war. But rebellion in the violent terms expressed during the American Revolution, and the concept of revolution itself, is not part of the “warp and woof of America.”
The United States has always been propounded on a higher idea of freedom than exists anywhere else in the world. It is no “notion” of liberty or equality that we seek violence for violence’s sake.
It is the real freedom to speak, to assemble, to worship, and, yes, to dissent from government’s (sometimes) troublesome authority; and to vote out those who trouble us most, thereby constantly changing our government, a quiet revolution of sorts, according to our lights.
Stephen T. Nelson
Berkeley
