By Partha Chakraborty–
(Partha Chakraborty, Ph.D., CFA, is an economist, a statistician, and a financial analyst by training. Currently, he is an entrepreneur in water technologies, blockchain and wealth management in the US and in India. Dr. Chakraborty lives in Southern California with his wife and teenage son. All opinions are of the author alone.)
“(A) decent respect of the opinions of the mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation,” and, thereby, “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” — The Declaration of Independence.
When I read The Declaration of Independence, I am struck by how much it reads like an explanation of why. It starts with a list of “facts submitted to a candid world” as evidence of “repeated injuries and usurpations” that makes the King of England a tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Moving on to “our British brethren,” the document bemoans that “they too have gone deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.” “WE, THEREFORE…of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT…are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.”
It feels almost like they are arguing a case for independence before the House of Lords.
In the same vein, the US Constitution, too, starts with a preamble, effectively an explanation of why. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
This time the Constitutional Convention is recording their reasons for posterity, contrasted with the colonial master England which still does not have a written constitution.
The two most important documents in US history, and among the most important anywhere in the Free World, start with a self-assessment and an establishment of causality.
This rag tag group of Colonies, with no previous experience in fighting a war, let alone against the most powerful armada in the world rose against an Empire where the Sun never set, with the full understanding that they would be dragged into bloody wars as a consequence, exactly as it happened in the following years. Signers knew this, also that if they lose that ensuing war, they would be dragged before the same King, one and all, to be condemned, drawn and quartered, almost literally. Framers were presumably less anxious of their physical safety, but they were not at all certain of the longevity — even usefulness — of the fruit of their work.
The founding documents hold individuals, mere mortals, as having unalienable rights “endowed by their Creator.”
When it comes to the State itself, they create arguments. America needs validation for the state to exist, because the state is created only to secure unalienable rights for the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The notion that the individual is supreme in her being, just because, and the State has to show cause, was – and I’d argue still is – unique.
Signers and Framers needed to be circumspect for sure, but it goes far more. Having foundational concerns enshrined in the very documents that created her defined the new country.
America needed to explain its existence in the Declaration of Independence, American democracy needed a reason for being in the Constitution. America needed the devastation of the Civil War to truly confront one of her original sins.
America needed the sacrifice in Pearl Harbor to enter World War II. America needed a victory against the evil of Axis powers to assume its natural position as leader of the Free World. America needed 9/11 to engage the world in a fight against terrorism for real. In other words, America is never perfect, but always striving for a more perfect union.
An unending pursuit of betterment of the State parallels the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness by the individual, complementing each other at every instant. This duality is not a by-product, or a derivative, but this is there by design, by construct and by choice.
Even if the State is never perfect, the individual is still endowed by their Creator, and thus created in Creator’s image. Therefore, the Individual is supreme, the State is not.
I view much of the world in the eyes of an immigrant as I am. I cannot claim to speak for each of the millions of foreign born here, a big reason why an overwhelming majority are attracted to the US is this supremacy of the individual over the State, enshrined and reiterated.
Individuals who self-select for the journey, literally and figuratively, tend to be created in the image itself — assured of themselves, striving for the pursuit of happiness, zealous to defend the liberties accorded — many would dare not dream of such hubris where they came from — and living life to the fullest.
They define America even better than some born here, because the foreign-born recite self-evident truths even when their command over the language is shaky at best.
America’s founding mantras are desires of a soul – any free soul – and dreams of their parents. The US may be born on the Fourth, but the force of its will was not born that day. It was already there, and still reverberates, especially among those who are the first generation.
Tomorrow’s fireworks are a way to feel it in your body. Let it show. Let it glow.
