Original intent
Americans celebrate Independence Day with barbecues, beer and fireworks.
American patriots remember Old Glory and sacrifices for freedom’s essential principles.
Conservatives strive to preserve our Constitution’s and Bill of Rights’ original intent, indispensably protecting our Declaration of Independence’s proclaimed God-given freedoms.
Progressives argue these old values are outdated; truths and circumstances change, requiring an evolving “living” constitution.
President Woodrow Wilson, Democrat progressive, recommended:
“If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface [preamble].”
“Every Fourth of July should be a time for examining our standards, our purposes, for determining afresh what principles, what forms of power we think most likely to effect [sic] our safety and happiness.”
On our Declaration of Independence’s 150th anniversary, President Calvin Coolidge unraveled Wilson’s sophistic seduction for increasing government power:
“If all men are created equal, that is final.
“If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.
”If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
“No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
“If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
“Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress.
“They are reactionary.
“Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
Susan Shotthafer,
Port Angeles