Americans across the country yesterday fired up their grills and set off fireworks to celebrate the 235th anniversary of the nation’s founding. They should also take a moment to reflect on the principles that drove the Founders to give birth to a new nation, and to assess how we have lived up to their vision. The section of the Declaration of Independence most often quoted 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.” But the part that immediately follows warrants equal attention: “[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men …”
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Government’s true purpose, then, is to protect the rights given to us by God — both from the vicissitudes of anarchy within and from foreign threats. Our rights do not originate with government, but it isn’t generally practical or desirable for individuals to defend their rights all on their own. For this reason, our Founders recognized the importance of delegating this task to the state and federal governments.
In the centuries that followed the nation’s founding, Americans have made important strides toward greater liberty that should be acknowledged. Americans ended the brutal institution of slavery, the greatest stain on the Founders’ legacy. The disgraceful discrimination against people of color has been removed from our public institutions and banned or at least stigmatized in most private ones. Women are now treated as full-fledged citizens.
Unfortunately, government has also, in many ways, expanded beyond its proper scope of securing our God-given rights. Politicians in Washington have used their ever-expanding powers to guarantee outcomes rather than establish a level playing field for citizens. They have riddled the tax code with provisions designed to reward particular kinds of behavior. They have earmarked funds for their preferred special interests, and come up with new ways of choosing winners and losers in the economy. As they do so, they trample upon the very rights that our nation was founded to protect.
By next Independence Day, the Supreme Court will likely have ruled on the constitutionality of President Obama’s national health care law, which is a direct affront to the principles on which this nation was founded. Obama has claimed the unprecedented power to force individuals to purchase a commercial product whether they want it or not. Here’s hoping that the nation’s highest court will give us something to celebrate next Fourth of July by striking down the law. There would be no greater way to honor the memory of our Founders than to place guardrails to block the further expansion of federal power.
