{"id":19,"date":"2013-07-09T22:03:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T05:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/?p=19"},"modified":"2015-03-20T14:21:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T21:21:32","slug":"independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our recent celebration of Independence Day inspired me to reread the Declaration of Independence. My first thought was to assess its relevance to our current state in America. Of course, we are no longer besieged by a foreign tyrant; and its enumerated grievances against a foreign power are no longer applicable. But its declarations still resound with a clarion call to action: \u201cthe right of the people to alter or abolish\u201d any form of government deemed destructive of certain unalienable rights, among which are \u201cLife, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d Although Americans are not in the same plight as Egyptians, we do have a right to alter our government wherever it impedes one of those unalienable rights, many of which are further specified in our Constitution. These words were preamble to a revolution and justification for America\u2019s Declaration of Independence.  In our form of democracy, activism is not only justified. It is required. So, if government derives from \u201cthe consent of the people,\u201d as the Declaration intones, then every citizen is required to understand his\/her rights and to hold elected officials responsible for their safeguard. I think we all understand in general terms what \u201clife and liberty\u201d entails. But when we consider the right of the people to \u201ckeep and bear Arms,\u201d are we cognizant of the second amendment context for the necessity of a \u201cwell -regulated Militia\u201d to maintain \u201cthe security of a free State?\u201d We do, after all, have law enforcement and a standing army to protect us from a foreign invasion. Certainly we all benefit from the first amendments\u2019 freedoms of religion, speech and the press. But how do we explain our legislators\u2019 application of religious interpretations to issues of homosexuality, same sex marriage, or abortion? It would appear that this amendment assures that no person can be forced to engage in any of these activities against his\/her religious convictions. Equally, it assures the freedom of those who do <strong>not <\/strong>share these religious convictions. The fifteenth and nineteenth amendments state that the rights of citizens to vote \u201cshall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State\u201d on account of race, color, sex, or previous condition of servitude. How does this mandate stack up against the whim of some state legislatures to abridge voting laws to curtail the vote of minorities?  <\/p>\n<p>Before I close this blog, I want to make one final comment on the \u201cpursuit of Happiness.\u201d A careful reading of the Declaration reveals what Jefferson meant. Also, his life gives an even more strident testimony of his intent. For Jefferson and for the signers of the Declaration, the <em>happiness <\/em>they considered our unalienable right was a common dedication to the public good. Of course, they foresaw a future nation where everybody had an equal opportunity to pursue their life goals. But this pursuit was seen as the necessary adjunct to the general welfare of the state. \u201cIt is the Right of the People 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 (the people\u2019s) Safety and Happiness.\u201d So with our freedom comes responsibility, not only to ourselves but to each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our recent celebration of Independence Day inspired me to reread the Declaration of Independence. My first thought was to assess its relevance to our current state in America. Of course, we are no longer besieged by a foreign tyrant; and its enumerated grievances against a foreign power are no longer applicable. But its declarations still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domesticissues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3UqUK-j","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}