Off the Editor’s Desk 7-5-2023

What are we celebrating on the 4th of July?

We are celebrating the divorce from Great Britain. Our founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia and came up with a document called the “Declaration of Independence.” 

In the first statement of the 1,320 word “Declaration” it tells the king of Great Britain the following: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind require that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Of course with this separation the Revolutionary War started and then the war of 1812 before the new United States was at peace with Great Britain. This “Declaration of Independence” was signed on July 4, 1776, some 247 years ago.

But, it was not until eleven years later, in 1787, after American patriots had won our independence over the English in the Revolutionary War that many of the men who had gathered in Philadelphia met again to draft a plan for governing the new nation. That plan turned into the Constitution that went into effect in 1789.

Together, those two documents and with the amendments to the Constitution are our nation’s top law that we live by.

Part of the second paragraph of the Declaration states: “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.”

Reading this, makes me wonder if the people we have elected to govern us, have read the Declaration, including the part of all men being created equal.

The Supreme Court just this past week ruled that using race as part of the formula for college entrance is unconstitutional, and I agree that getting into college should be on the student’s merit and not on the color of their skin.

I know that the Democrats will use this as another attempt to pack the court and make it just a political arm of the party to rubber stamp the Democrats agenda.

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.” — Abraham Lincoln

Thanks for reading!     ~Carlton