On this day, two hundred and thirty two years ago, the representatives of the States that comprised the Continental Congress issued a Declaration of Independence. Despite historical glorifications of the event, not all of the States representatives were for the Declaration. In truth, numerous delegations from various States were opposed to it and eventually signed only after a lengthy process of politicking.

As most are aware, Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration, though it is believed that others made amendments to its language. The most brilliant and universal passage from the Declaration reads…

“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.”

Despite this statement, both the document’s author, and those that signed it, refused to apply its maxim to those in bondage. That is not to say that there weren’t those that raised the question of its hypocrisy, only that the importance of the Declaration being issued was their foremost concern, and that to address the issue of slavery would have caused numerous southern States to disengage themselves from the process being that their economies relied on slave labour. Thus, while the statement is one of the most powerful included in any political document in modern history, it is ultimately little more than convenient eloquence as it failed to live up to its universal proposition.

When John and Abigail Adams first inhabited The White House, as Adams was the first President to do so, they found themselves in a building still under construction, one completely surrounded by mud. In that mud were the tents of the African American slaves used to construct it. Thus, while the second President of the United States conducted his daily business, he did so while slaves laboured to finish the building in which he sat.

I mention this, it being the 4th of July, to demonstrate a point. That even the best intentioned of men are ultimately governed more by agenda than conscience, and that it is crucial that we never overlook that reality, for it is just as prevalent now as it was then.

Agenda leads nations to war. Conscience avoids it at all costs. Agenda allows a nation to exist for eighty-seven years without addressing the evils of slavery. Conscience dictates that such a thing is impossibility.

The government of the United States, though celebrated as democratic from its birth, has always been plutocratic, and therefore entirely adherent to the strictures of agenda. For true democracy is a thing of conscience, and if not, then something altogether different.