Independence Day 2004

Independence Day 2004
by: Henry W. Hessing.

John Locke discovered the moral foundations and America’s Founding Fathers established the political institutions necessary to create a free society that recognizes each individual is capable of rational self-government. Their thinking created our Declaration of Independence, our written Constitution as our fundamental law and the Bill of Rights. Our Constitution stands above government as a “higher law.” It creates, defines and limits the power of government. It protects the rights of the individual. It curbs abuse of power through checks and balances. The Constitution forever guarantees our liberty.

On Flag Day, 2003, Edwin A. Locke wrote an article that discussed the core values of reason, rights and science. He noted that 18th century Enlightenment’s indispensable achievement was the concept of individual rights. “John Locke dramatized that individuals do not exist to serve government, but rather that governments exist to protect individuals. The individual, said Locke, has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was the founding philosophy of America.”

Later that same month, Michael Berliner wrote an article concerning the meaning of Independence Day. He described the American Revolution as unique in human history: “a revolution – and a nation - founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia and Washington at Valley Forge pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

“Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Mr. Berliner further explains: “Political independence rests on…the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisioned by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one’s thinking. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit.”

We need to rediscover our individual morality. Our youth and the youth of other lands must learn that thinking is an act of choice. A code of values accepted by choice is our code of morality. When we illustrate that man’s life is the standard of morality, that life is its purpose, and the purpose of morality is to teach us to enjoy our lives and ourselves, we will defeat the evil we faced on September 11, 2001 and we continue to face today. Ayn Rand once described the essence of evil in Atlas Shrugged, “…those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they are after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.”

What matters then is a set of rules and values that we the people, our leaders of today and tomorrow, and our nation may live by so that we may set the example for other rulers and nations so they can learn and live by them as well. The rules and values we accept by choice, i.e., our moral code is founded in the philosophy of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Its principles created the only moral country in the history of the world. America was liberated from tyranny, and established the first government ever based on individual rights. These rights are protected by our written Constitution. The moral preconditions of free society are our own two hundred year old documents!

For the purpose of our self-preservation, we need this moral code. We need to teach it in our schools and education systems, in all lands oppressed by dictatorships, communism, totalitarianism, and the radical Islamic fundamentalist states that harbor terrorism. American statesmen should proclaim that the principle of individual rights is our morality. It is the basis of our Declaration of Independence. We need to emphasize the importance of these documents at home and distribute them abroad. They are free for all to read and represent what liberty and individual freedom offer - achievement, value, grandeur, goodness and joy as the morality of life.