Have a happy Independence Day. But maybe remember what it means too

Twelve score and three years ago, the fathers of our cousins across the Atlantic, brought forth on their continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Well, all men in the strictly limited sense of the word ‘man’. Women weren’t given the vote or anything radical like that. And even amongst men, it wasn’t really every man. The main author of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was a slaveowner himself and able to live with the notion that anyone black amongst men created in supposed equality, could be held in slavery, his rights being pretty much equal to those of livestock.

Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the USA
who denied African-American any rights a white man was bound to respect

The fact that slavery existed at the same time as the founding fathers issued the Declaration of Independence, suggested to many that its lofty sentiments were only ever intended to apply to whites. This led, as I’ve pointed out before, to what today is a shocking claim at the conclusion of the Dred Scott case in 1857. Chief Justice of the United States, Roger Taney, declared in his judgement that from the earliest days of the nation, ‘negroes’ were seen as inferior and, indeed, “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

There have been many cases, for instance of police shootings of black men, which rather suggest that some still feel that African Americans have no rights a white man is bound to respect.

Nor were all white men precisely equal. Most of the states of the time applied fancy franchise rules, with the vote only available to those who held certain levels of wealth. There was a widespread feeling around the western world at the time that those without property had nothing to lose from political decisions, and might therefore act recklessly if they were given a say in them.

But none of that really matters. Or rather, it matters a great deal, but only to show the way humanity makes progress: through compromise, through half measures, through what may sometimes seem nothing less than hypocrisy. Despite all the contradictions and equivocations, the Constitution that was written based on Jefferson’s powerful words, has stood the test of time remarkably well, surviving a devastating civil war that led to the abolition of slavery; the often brutal measures to repress the women’s suffrage movement; and the authoritarian attempts to hijack the Constitution during the McCarthy era.

Senator Joseph McCarthy:
tried to distort the US Constitution into authoritarianism

Through its existence, it has been a beacon to millions around the world. When that Constitution was launched, ‘democracy’ was a derogatory term in Europe. It implied chaotic rule by the masses, by their nature incapable of rule and opening the door to anarchy. When Lincoln claimed, in the Gettysburg address, that the aim of his war was to ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, he wasn’t exaggerating. Precious few parts of the Earth allowed the people much of a say in government; Lincoln’s efforts ensured that rather more of the US people had such a say; the enfranchisement of women half a century later extended that for the first time to a majority of the people. The other nations we now think of as democracies followed in the wake of the United States.

It is, therefore, hard to overstate the importance of the event the US celebrates on 4 July, not just for Americans but for the world. Certainly, it took a lot longer to come even close to recognising that all men, and women, should be seen as equal, and we’re still far from realising that equality in practice. But at least the aspiration has been there since 1776 and we’ve slowly moved towards it.

Sadly, the vision Jefferson and his contemporaries championed, flawed and contradictory as it may have been, but still profoundly invigorating and freeing in the long term, is now more under threat than ever. Donald Trump is once more trying to distort the Constitution in an authoritarian direction, as Senator McCarthy did in the fifties – but this time with the power of the White House behind him.

So perhaps today’s celebrations need to be a little muted. Among the festivities, Americans need to realise that a man elected under the provisions of the Constitution is undermining it. And, to adapt Lincoln’s words once more, they should highly resolve that those who preceded them shall not have struggled in vain, and continue the fight to ensure that a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all and not just some people have an equal right to freedom, can indeed endure.

Donald Trump:
trying McCarthy's trick again, but with the power of the White House