225 years on, 89,304 days as an independent nation, and we are still here. Sure, the experiment hasn’t worked out quite as well as many of us would’ve liked, but here we are. Just over a decade later, the same Constitution we have today, albeit many amendments later, would be brought into effect. And still, the Declaration of Independence is one of the most important and fascinating documents in human history, and one of the most incredible when taken into the context of colonial times.

I have asked myself many times what Thomas Jefferson really meant with the phrase “the pursuit of happiness.” Of course, by definition, happiness is a state of joy, well-being, or contentment. But, how each human being finds happiness is different, and keep in mind just how absurd it really was for a society of slave holders to pen that phrase with a straight face. But I’m not sure that he intended the pursuit of happiness to be limited to privledged white landowners. In fact, Jefferson would often talk about his dream of an agrarian society, which I suppose was his idea of a utopia. So, I do believe he meant the pursuit of happiness to extend much further than just the inner circles of privilege. Although, beyond simple farmers getting a better deal than they ever did in continental Europe or the British isles, it was likely all just rhetoric, genius rhetoric at that.

Today in a global economy you would think America a superpower, and yet about the only superpower we have is to consume more than everyone else. That isn’t something to be proud of, and while we are still operating under the same constitutional law as we were 200 years ago, more or less, our interpretations of the intentions of the founders have become quite skewed. We are a country owned by corporations and run predominantly by lawyers. 

One could argue that America was founded by a bunch of cocky pricks who had no legal authority to do any of this. Essentially, that is correct. Deriving their authority from the will of the people is an incredibly bold statement, and not even true. About one third of the colonists were still loyal British citizens and another third were just trying to get by, with no interest in who was running things. Plus without the French it’s highly unlikely the revolution would’ve been successful. You could say that the founding fathers were lucky, but they were clearly smart enough to make enough of their own luck.

Now that I’ve given a little impromptu history lesson, I’m wondering if the more accurate phrase would’ve been the pursuit of cockiness. 

~ Amelia Desertsong, July 4, 2021