Fourth of July, 2018!

Happy 242nd birthday to your land and my land!

And happy 146th birthday to President Coolidge, who provides us with today’s filler… from beyond the grave!

A few of the websites and Twitter commentaries I follow featured the following excerpt from a Coolidge speech in 1926. The occasion was the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, which technically was celebrated on July 5th due to the 4th being on a Sunday that year. It’s a good one because it cuts to the chase:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. 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 can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

When Coolidge spoke in 1926, the ideals of the Declaration were, to put it kindly, less fully realized than they are today. As I’ve said before, blame the humans, not those ideals. The ideals were good. They still are good, and they ever shall be good. We poor souls need to keep striving to live up to them.