Radical Declaration

"A toast? Yeah, to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and, oh, my personal favorite, had their entrails cut out and burned. So...here's to the men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they knew was right...what they KNEW was right."
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Jacob Hornberger observes that the primary significance of the Fourth of July rests not in remembering our founding ancestors who pushed back against tyranny--although their actions are certainly admirable.

Instead, it rests in our First Law--an expression of the most revolutionary declaration in political history.

Age old popular belief was that rights came from government, that rights were privileges bestowed by the state. As such, it was within government's scope to alter or revoke those privileges at its discretion.

The Declaration of Independence upended that belief. Rights such as life, liberty, and property are not bestowed by government. People are born with them as a function of their humanity. These rights are unalienable, meaning that they cannot be validly altered or revoked by government.

Rather than being the originator of rights, government is a construct of the people with the expressed purpose to protect those rights. If an extant government is failing in that regard, then it is within the people's legitimate power to throw off that design in favor of a better one.

239 years after this declaration was made, it can hard for us to appreciate just how radical this declaration was.

And largely still is.