PACKET EDITORIAL, July 3
"We hold these truths to be self-evident," the Declaration of Independence declares, "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."
As we celebrate the 231st anniversary this week of the unanimous declaration of the representatives from the 13 American Colonies to be independent of "the King of Great Britain," it’s important to remind ourselves of the reasons they did so and of the kind of country they hoped to establish.
Some historians call the product of the declaration issued on July 4, 1776, the American Revolution, and the armed conflict that followed the Revolutionary War. But others contend that while many of the ideas the Founding Fathers put forward were surely revolutionary for their time freedom of speech, separation of church and state, even the notion that "all men are created equal" most colonists felt a close kinship to the British crown before, during and even after their new nation had been formed. To them, the purpose of the war was not to foment a revolution; it was, simply, to achieve independence.
This is no small distinction. The dictionary definition of a revolution a "sudden, radical or complete change," especially one that involves "the overthrow of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed" didn’t happen here. The colonists didn’t remove George III from the throne; they removed themselves from his sovereignty. Then they adopted a Constitution strongly influenced by British common law, dating back to the Magna Carta; created a legislative branch similar to the British Parliament; and established a judiciary modeled after the British court system.
If Karl Marx preached revolution, Thomas Jefferson preached liberty. Vladimir Lenin was a revolutionary; George Washington was a freedom fighter.
From the moment they declared the United States of America a new nation "conceived in liberty," as Lincoln later put it the Founding Fathers dedicated themselves to promoting and preserving freedom: individual freedom, in the form of the Bill of Rights, and collective freedom, in the form of independence from foreign rule. In the more than two centuries that followed, Americans have fought to promote and expand that freedom at home for slaves, for people of color, for women and to preserve that freedom from being threatened from abroad.
It is this desire simply to be free that separates the America that fought a War of Independence from so many other nations that were spawned by revolution. President George W. Bush’s present adventurism in Iraq notwithstanding, Americans have rarely sought hegemony, like imperial Britain, or taken up arms, like communist Russia, to spread our ideology around the globe. Our strength has always been in our conviction that great ideas and ideals, not military might, will inspire people in other lands to admire and emulate our way of life.
The greatest expression of those ideas and ideals is found in the document signed by five New Jerseyans Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson and Abraham Clark and 51 other representatives of 12 American Colonies assembled in Philadelphia 231 years ago this week. We can’t think of a more appropriate way to celebrate this Independence Day than to read it.

