Originally published in the Daily Press.
When Thomas Jefferson penned the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident” 236 years ago, he couldn’t have made a more idealistic or conflicted argument.
To who are these words self-evident? Who is entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?
Was the phrase self-evident to those Native Americans who were having their lands confiscated?
Was the pursuit of happiness self-evident to women who did not have the right of franchise?
Was this phrase self-evident to the thousands of slaves who wouldn’t see emancipation for nearly another hundred years?
Fast-forward to today.
Is this phrase self-evident to the young child born into poverty with limited choice of education?
Is this phrase self-evident to healthy citizens who have to pay exorbitant healthcare costs because other citizens can’t say no to big gulps, cigarettes, reckless driving and alcohol?
Is this phrase self-evident to the illegal immigrant who has been working to better their life and has contributed to the economy for years in America, only to face deportation?
The above questions are not meant to be loaded — and don’t think I have a liberal opinion on the modern questions either. These questions show that the notion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will often mean different things to well-meaning people. In other words, rational people can see that liberty for some — perhaps even the majority — may not promote liberty for others.
That’s why as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, perhaps what we should celebrate is another historic date: June 21, 1788, or, if you are into Virginia history, June 25 of that year. On June 21, our U.S. Constitution was ratified by three-quarters of the states when New Hampshire assented. This made the US Constitution the law of the land. On June 25, Virginia became the 10th state in the Union — but only by a narrow 89-79 vote.
Instead of having a completely ineffectual government under the Articles of Confederation, our Founders drafted a framework for us to have these great debates over liberty and the extent of government power.
The ratified Constitution gave us the framework for how our government should operate — it enumerated what the government can and should do.
But the narrow vote in Virginia was for a reason. And it was George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, as manifested by another Virginian, James Madison, in the Bill of Rights, which spelled out what true freedoms the government could not take away or infringe upon.
It is our Constitution and Virginia’s limit on government — the Bill of Rights — that allows us our true, yet limited, liberty. It ensures we are not French revolutionaries, but that we have the right to argue great issues in the press, debate them in Congress, reserve some issues to the states, and, as we saw this past week, see how the Supreme Court resolves the law.
It is an oversimplification to say our Constitution is a checklist of what the government can and cannot do. The Constitution and its amendments are the very process of our liberty.
Liberty is hardly self-evident; that is an idealistic, romantic, and quite contradictory way of thinking. Instead, liberty, especially in America, is a messy, complicated, convoluted process — only made sane by our Constitution.
And it’s that which we should celebrate on Independence Day.
My column runs every other Wednesday in the Daily Press Opinion pages. Get your digital membership today!
