Happy Independence Day! It is a day to remember our Founders’ tribulations and ideals, and to rescue their legacy from modern misappropriation.
Between 1765 and 1774, British Parliament passed several laws applying exclusively to America, triggering colonial displeasure with British rule. Colonial citizens, having no representation in Parliament, believed these laws illegitimate. Successive acts of government without representation provoked protests — most notoriously, the Boston Tea Party. Parliament retaliated with the Intolerable Acts, punitively dissolving Massachusetts’ self-government and stripping its citizens’ civil rights. The First Continental Congress convened in 1774 to petition for redress, to no avail. The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775 to plan colonial defense. With war underway, the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The Declaration is truly revolutionary. It begins by outlining a governing philosophy, asserting as self-evident that all men are created equal, possessed of unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that governments exist to secure those rights pursuant to the consent of the governed, and that citizens may remake government should it fail in these ends. The Declaration then specifies grievances against the British government, the first several of which accuse the Crown of refusing to approve laws necessary for the public good, obstructing governors and legislatures from passing essential laws, dissolving local elected bodies, denying representation in government, and of general disregard for the consent of the governed. Taxation appears specifically as a complaint against taxation without representation.
The Declaration illuminates the Founders’ ideals. We continue the struggle to advance those ideals. Women, Native Americans, people of color, the LGBT community, non-Christians and members of many other groups were long denied their “unalienable rights,” disenfranchised from the suffrage, representation and consent which were the Founders’ primary aims. The genius of American democracy is that conscientious citizens of successive generations have recognized their responsibility to realize and perfect the Founders’ ideals. Often this has been painful due to others’ misidentification of the Founders’ deficiencies as virtues to be emulated and extended.
The latter group now heavily congregates in the Republican Party, misappropriating the terms “Tea Party” and “Patriot.” They are anything but. The Founders decried unrepresentative or punitive government, government refusal to legislate in the public interest, and taxation without representation. Conversely, the Republican Party aggressively promulgates laws openly intended to disenfranchise large segments of voters, relentlessly seeking to retain and extend punitive laws targeting women, the LGBT community and immigrants, among others. They refuse to pass legislation in the public interest. Proposals affecting food aid to children and families, disaster relief, background checks for gun owners and job creation efforts are obstructed. “Damn the public good” is their trademark. One wonders not only if they have read the Declaration, but also if they believe in it. They are certainly inappropriately using the terms “Tea Party” and “Patriot.”
Today let’s recommit to the common good, keeping true to the Founders’ real ideals and intent.
The Democratic Town Committee supplies this column.