For many Americans, the Fourth of July, celebrating the American Declaration of Independence, has fallen into disrepute. The holiday has lost its meaning because Americans have forgotten their duties and rights as citizens and have become accustomed to their status as subjects.
Some Americans, primarily on the left, associate the document and the society that birthed it with slavery. They mock the declaration’s principles as hypocritical or even as an outright justification of tyranny. They demand new holidays, separate national anthems, and the destruction of national monuments.
Other Americans, primarily on the right, attack what they see as the abstract character of the document. They equate its natural rights doctrine with unlimited freedom rather than with liberty in accordance with nature and the duties of citizenship. They see it as endorsing unlimited despotism.
Still others, including our leading politicians, defend the document from these claims by arguing that America is an “idea” — a form without content, a nation without a people or a way of life. Indeed, they say, that’s its strength: we are Americans precisely because we are diverse. We are nothing. But the declaration is far more resilient than this.
Lincoln vs. Douglas
One hundred and sixty years ago Stephen Douglas, the brilliant author of the Compromise of 1850, also belittled the declaration. Criticizing its application to abolitionism, he interpreted it and its principles as historical artifacts without present application. If it were the expression of a bygone revolt with narrow objectives, then he could deny
