"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, --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." - Thomas Jefferson
This. This is a loaded statement. It's been a loaded statement since its inception 240 years ago. In its original draft Jefferson alluded to the "moral depravity" known as slavery, claiming that it was forced upon the colonies by Britain and should be abolished. This was removed from the Declaration. Much of Jefferson's writings displayed his stance on how ethically wrong slavery was. That it was a "hideous blot" and threatened the survival of our new country. Jefferson. Owned. Slaves. It doesn't matter how well they were treated, the cultural expectations of the time, or the necessity of it. You can try to justify it upside down and backwards, but at the end of the day he was still the owner of humans. He was still practicing the exact thing he was against. He was still contradicting his own five words; "...all men are created equal..." Was he a bad man? No. He was a brilliant man, who did brilliant things and was human. Humans are imperfect.
He was a founding father of a nation built on a foundation of acknowledging wrong doings and turning a blind eye.
Fast forward to 1863. Abraham Lincoln uses Jefferson's words in his Gettysburg Address.
"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."
Slavery ended...but only after brothers killed brothers and blood was shed on our nation's soil. Only after that invisible, but equally visible, crack in our nation claimed thousands.
Lincoln believed the Declaration to be the statement of principals and the moral compass our nation should follow. He was assassinated a year and a half after the Gettysburg Address by being shot, point blank, in the back of the head.
Fast forward 100 years. Martin Luther King Jr. references these words in his I Have a Dream Speech, which he presented to the nation at a rally at the National Mall, which consisted of approximately 300,000 attendees. A rally, which was organized so meticulously by Randolph and Rustin, that it remained, as was intended, nonviolent.
This led to The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Martin Luther King Jr, would be assassinated 4 years later by being shot in the face.
Here we stand, 50 years post civil rights, 150 years post slavery, 240 years post Declaration. How are things looking to you?
I see everyone discussing how sickening it all is. How horrible things have gotten. How man has turned against man. How black lives matter. How all lives matter. How people are being killed, black, white, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, men, women, good, bad. Look at those words. Look at them. Every single one of them should be replaced with one word. Human. Instead, like everything, we have turned them into antonyms; black/white, gay/straight...us/them.
As long as we are viewing people as walking antonyms and our government as a long established contradiction, we are never, NEVER, going to produce true, positive change. We will never truly follow the words written 240 years ago.
Stop taking a stand. Instead, try changing your perception.
Laura Gustafson
