Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Happy Independence Day

A great day for barbeque, baseball, and remembering one of the most significant documents in history. I've seen a few references this year to the rough draft of the Declaration which among other things contains a remarkable attack on slavery:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of
a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying
them to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportations thither. this piratical warfare,
the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this excrable commerce
Pretty amazing. I'd also like to echo a point made by a commenter on Volokh that we were not Americans fighting the British. We were British, and we were fighting our own people and our own government. I cannot imagine what courage and principle it took to sign one's name to such a document, but we owe a lot to them and part of what we owe is to preserve what they fought for.

3 comments:

dainasti said...

I think it's most remarkable that we haven't been able to teach the public the difference between it's and its in over 200 years.

Alan Rosenwinkel said...

On that topic, have you ever read
Eats, shoots and leaves? It's pretty funny :-)

Matt said...

"It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word."
--Andrew Jackson

 
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