It’s almost the Fourth of July and we look forward to celebrating another Independence Day. We should remember that at the center of all the fireworks displays, backyard picnics, red white and blue banners and patriotic songs is a piece of paper with 1,450 words and signatures on it. It is “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.”
The piece of paper and written words are important because our country’s founders aimed to create a government of laws and not of men. It would be one thing to verbally declare that all men are created equal, possessing specific rights and freedoms. But to write them down and sign them with a mutual pledge to “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” is quite another matter.
The document we celebrate and the written U.S. Constitution that followed has enabled our free society and democratic republic to endure centuries of internal strife and external enemies.
The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 was a petition for redress against the king of Great Britain for a long series of abuses and alleged tyrannies. These included secret governments, excessive taxation, conscription, obstructing justice, blocking immigration and cutting off overseas trade, among many others listed on the single page document.
All of these transgressions became infractions under the new nation’s written laws. No man is above the law. That’s what it means to be a nation of written laws and not of men. James Madison, author of our Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, wrote, “If men were angels; no government would be necessary.”
But even a nation of laws can be compromised or subverted by tyrants or demagogues. We may now be living in such a time.
The institutions of our judiciary, free press, social equality, access to the voting booth, civility and truth are all under attack. Our norms of mutual tolerance and shared political power are being shredded.
We have a president who daily attacks the free press, threatens to lock up his rivals, ignores the separation of powers and claims to be singularly above the law — exactly the kind of tyranny the original Declaration of Independence addressed.
“#He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” “#For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” “# preventing the population of these States … #obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners.” These are not recent hashtags about our current president; these are passages from the 1776 Declaration of Independence against King George III of Great Britain.
“How Democracies Die” is a current book co-written by a Sonoma County native, Daniel Ziblatt, who spoke here recently. Ziblatt is a professor of government at Harvard University who has studied the fall of numerous foreign governments to fascism, military coups and the rise of dictators and authoritarians.
Ziblatt once thought America was immune from such anti-democratic threats. Not anymore and he points directly at the election of Donald Trump as his source of pessimism.
America’s democracy is under immediate threat and is in need of mass citizen action to defend and restore basic norms of a free society, Ziblatt believes and writes.
“Democracy no longer ends with a bang — in a revolution or military coup — but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions … and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms,” Ziblatt writes in his book’s introduction.
The July 4, 1776 document refers to certain “self-evident” and “unalienable” rights. Unalienable means ‘can not be taken away or denied.’ In 1776 this did not apply to women or slaves. We had to write more words on paper to expand these human rights with amendments to our U.S. Constitution.
These written words and the basic norms that have protected them for 242 years are in need of defense. No single man can destroy a democracy, but no single person can save one either.
Rollie Atkinson is the publisher of The Windsor Times.
