Revolting.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
When we consider the US founding document, we spend a lot of time talking about the first, tasty, juicy section, where Jefferson lays out in elegant prose an expression of the American Mind, as he put it. And rightly so. We almost always elide the list of grievances, the lawyer's brief, the largest and arguably what was most important part for the signers themselves. But, rereading the Declaration today, 237 years on from its signing, I was struck by the very last line. What Congress, through Jefferson, was saying to George III was that the best proof of the document he had in his royal hands (received sometime in August!) was a mutual pledge by the Congress, of the very things inalienably granted each individual by their Creator: life, liberty and property, as asserted in the beginning of the Declaration. Our founders were willing to put it all on the line, to go "all in" against the most powerful nation on Earth at that time.
For what and with whom would you pledge your Life, your Fortune and your sacred Honor? Can you imagine our current Congress being so resolved? Thank God nothing of such consequence, requiring a pledge like this, faces us today.
When we consider the US founding document, we spend a lot of time talking about the first, tasty, juicy section, where Jefferson lays out in elegant prose an expression of the American Mind, as he put it. And rightly so. We almost always elide the list of grievances, the lawyer's brief, the largest and arguably what was most important part for the signers themselves. But, rereading the Declaration today, 237 years on from its signing, I was struck by the very last line. What Congress, through Jefferson, was saying to George III was that the best proof of the document he had in his royal hands (received sometime in August!) was a mutual pledge by the Congress, of the very things inalienably granted each individual by their Creator: life, liberty and property, as asserted in the beginning of the Declaration. Our founders were willing to put it all on the line, to go "all in" against the most powerful nation on Earth at that time.
For what and with whom would you pledge your Life, your Fortune and your sacred Honor? Can you imagine our current Congress being so resolved? Thank God nothing of such consequence, requiring a pledge like this, faces us today.