After the best part of a century dominating world events and its economy and on top of its victory over “The Evil Empire” that ended the Cold War, America is having what can only be described as an “existential crisis”. To the consternation of millions of cosmopolitan Americans, their country appears locked in a debate deriving more from the 18^th century than the 21^st.

As with any power that comes to dominate all rivals, the risk that the only future is decline underlies any self-deluding hubris. America’s wobble started in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich steered the Republicans into the political long grass of reactionary politics. Funded by self-interested industry barons, the reality that “trickle-down” Reaganomics failed to enrich anyone but the rich did not dissuade them. The culmination was the election of Trump in 2016, with his arrogant disregard for procedure or democracy. Having burned their bridges and plunged the country into a $32 trillion debt, Republicans saw little option but to double down on tax cuts, States’ Rights, right-wing moralising and more Trumpanomics.

For the first time in the 160 years since their Civil War, America has segregated itself into two camps of mutual hostility. This threatens the foundations of a nation that once made the 20^th century its own. It is time both sides in this standoff overcame their respective polemic, stop paying lip service to partisan readings of their Constitution and rediscover the spirit in which it was conceived in the first place.

Today, on their country’s 247^th birthday, seems a propitious day to do just that.

On July 4^th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which said: 

“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.”

—Declaration of Independence, 1776

Leave aside that blacks, women, Indians, etc. did not get a look-in until later, this document was astonishingly radical in a world dominated by a coterie of kings, nobles and rich merchants Everybody else accepted their lowlier status from birth or were punished for their effrontery. But these upstart legislators on the edge of a continent declared that no man was born better than any other. It was the foundation on which this Western civilisation of ours was built. 

America was founded on the radical principle that all men are created equal is self-evident came under pressure eighty-seven years later, when southern white men went to war to reshape America into a nation in which others were of lower status and equality was not “self-evident.” But “Honest Abe” had wisdom and courage enough to reassert that founding principle.

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and this Civil War is testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The United States—and its founding principle—endured and expanded the idea that all men are created equal to include all skin colours and genders.

Although not (yet) a civil war, America is facing serious rebellion against that founding principle, as a few seek to reshape America so that such people consider themselves better than others.

Although not (yet) a civil war, America is facing serious rebellion against that founding principle, as a few seek to reshape America so that such people are better than others.

“We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to defend the idea of human equality.”—

.”—signatories of the Declaration of Independence

Down the years, many other Americans have sacrificed their own fortunes, honor, and even their lives, following Lincoln’s admonition: 

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

—The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Trump and his devotees deserve to have such words stapled to their foreheads.

#1074—660 words