COMMENTARY: Individual Americans have stepped up in times of strife since the first Independence Day.
By Lawrence P. Grayson, EWTN News, 7/4/20
Lawrence Grayson is a visiting scholar in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
The Fourth of July is typically a day of joyous festivities celebrating America’s birth as a nation. Today, however, the country is experiencing spirit-wrenching events. The nation has undergone several months of lockdown and restrictions on its constitutional freedoms of assembly and religion due to a viral pandemic. Riots have occurred in cities across the country, sparked by the egregious death of a black man by an excessively combative police officer.
The scourge of abortion continues to be a nationally divisive issue, with roughly half of the population approving of it and half opposed to it, more than 47 years after it was legalized by the Supreme Court. These are not simply the results of disagreements over public policy. Rather, they indicate fundamental differences in the worldview through which the founding values of this country are interpreted — or ignored. As Independence Day approaches, take a moment to reread (or perhaps read for the first time) the Declaration of Independence. Think about what it says and what it implies.
After a brief statement of purpose, the Declaration states “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.” ….
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