A few years ago, an obscure document found publication on the eastern seaboard of this continent. It contained, among other indictments, an enumeration of certain self-evident truths, and unalienable rights. The document upheld a firm belief in Nature, in God, and in Laws of Nature. It maintained an idea of equality, in station and creation. It affirmed interconnectedness in lives, and fortunes, and honor. A few years later, to survey the resultant states, increased now to number 50, is to observe the decay and breakdown of fundamental principles. The surveyor should ask, what truths are self-evident now, which rights unalienable? For in practice, it appears that while all men may be created equal, the course of nature has separated them and rendered them unequal. The rights to life forfeit, to liberty constrained, and the pursuit of happiness denied. While our creations may be equal in theory, the practices of our entries and stations is certainly separate. Today, let us hold these truths self-evident, that there cannot be equality while disparities cast us into socioeconomic strata; that our rights have been alienated from us: through the denial of equal healthcare to guard our lives; by withholding access to education to liberate us from such strata; and preventing us the mobility to safely pursue our happinesses. Such endowments that have been are now bankrupt, their trusts barren, and our trust betrayed. We have previously pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our honor to each other. Through dishonor, we have seen the valuation of one life over another and the enrichment of your fortunes over mine, with no pretense of mutual duty and obligation to each other. Governments, it has been said, were to be instituted among such honorable men and women to secure the equal rights of all. Honorable men and women everywhere should not stand for even natural separate but equal doctrines. Honorable men and women across this nation ought pledge their affirmation that such truths and rights were not simply lip service to dissolve a besieged nation and replace it with one dissolute in its core. As the Nation recovers from near economic catastrophe, and it fights to rebuild itself financially in an ecofriendly way, let us not forget this obscure document. If this Nation is to truly be a beacon on a hill to light and guide the world, we must not hide in the shadows of our own light. ~Publius
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 16:12:53 +0000
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