The Blog at MSPC

Before there could be a declaration, there had to be a decision. That decision came on July 2, 1776.

Part of a citizen’s job is to inform the rising generation of what the Declaration really said, what it really means, and why it is important. May we continue that effort long after this 250th anniversary has receded into history.

Governments have only those powers that the people, by consent, have given them. When a government no longer serves its rightful purpose, the people may reorganize or remove it.

Most of us understand that the Constitution is a statement of positive law—that is, man-made law—but ask whether the Declaration is law as well.

The job of drafting a declaration of independence was handed to a group historians call the “committee of five.”

July 1, 1776, witnessed one of the most consequential debates in American history. The topic was whether America should declare independence. The principal participants were the passionate John Adams of Massachusetts for the affirmative and the eloquent John Dickinson of Pennsylvania for the negative.

Americans knew of the long struggle for liberty waged against the Crown by their British ancestors. Absolute submission to a government in which they had no representation was not a condition they were prepared to accept.

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.

The fireworks of July 4 celebrate the ideals of liberty and equality. But July 2 was when independence truly began—when courage triumphed over fear, and a group of revolutionaries voted to create a new nation.