It all started out with such lofty ideals. And those ideals have continued to be expressed in various ways through the past couple of hundred years.

But the Fourth has turned into such a self-congratulatory indulgence, full of noise and simulated violence that seems all too innapropriate give the real explosive mayhem being inflicted by so many factions against each other in various places where we are in pursuit of one objective or another. Around where I live, actual gunfire with live ammunition is considered good form by many.

Today, in no less conservative a place than Barron's financial weekly publication, I saw a discussion about how government must derive its power from the consent of those governed - and how this is central to the Declaration of Independence.

Could anything be more relevant on this national holiday than that document? The words speak for themselves, yet I am guessing that about half the country will perceive one thing and the other half something different. Without any further commentary of my own, I offer you the exact words of the founding fathers...

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security

---

In the entry posted following this, about depression from a Buddhist point of view, it is observed that self-cherishing is an affliction that causes tremendous suffering. With self-cherishing having become a dominant theme of present-day Fourth celebration, I wonder if there aren't some parallels.

---