There are moments in history that bring out the best in people. Circumstances demand the highest and best of the human spirit and individuals and groups rise above what they might otherwise have become. 236 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document and the nation that was founded upon it remain one of the high points of human history. The signers of the Declaration weren’t the first people in human history to seek freedom and equality, liberty and union. They weren’t the first to rise up against authoritarian rule. Nor were they the last. They are remembered, in part, because they were successful. Had their revolution been crushed things would be so different that it is pointless to speculate on what impact they may have had on history.

Because they were not only successful, but also articulate we have not only the privilege of living in the country they founded but also the document that spells out the reasons and the basic principles behind their actions. It is a rare privilege on both counts. Out of more than 7 billion people who occupy the planet, roughly 300 million live in the United States. 95.7% of the people on this planet live in other places with other governments, many of them suffering under repressive regimes and experiencing gross inequalities in distribution of essential resources.

Our forebears based their independence upon the principle of equality. “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.” The purpose of government, they stated, is to secure those rights. They went on to list specific examples of the King of England’s failure to provide those rights to the people under his rule.

The document holds in tension some very difficult concepts. As Alexis de Tocqueville and others have noted, the document venerates both liberty and equality. De Tocqueville believed that this tension would ultimately lead to favoring one over the other. In democracy, he argued, Americans would favor equality over freedom because its material benefits are more immediate and tangible. Others argued that the choice would be freedom over equality because of the way freedom is highly valued. James Q. Wilson and others argued that freedom is the highest held value of Americans.

The choice: freedom vs. equality is, of course, a false choice. Despite the articulate statements of historians and political scientists, freedom isn’t freedom unless it is available to all. It was one of the bloodiest lessons this nation had to learn. The new nation accepted slavery as a legal principle in 1787, violating the ideals put forth in the Declaration. It took over three-quarters of a century for the nation to understand that the institution of slavery not only severely restricted the freedom and oppressed those enslaved. It also limited the freedom of the slaveholders. It is a basic principle of Exodus: as long as one remains enslaved, no one else can be free. Freedom does not truly exist when some are not free.

Somehow, the authors of the Declaration got it right, despite the prevailing political theories of the time and of subsequent generations. They enshrined both freedom and equality in the document. It is not, in the eyes of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, a choice of “either-or.” It is, rather, the requirement of “both-and.”

Of course their words were loftier than our realities. The high sentiments of the Declaration overlooked the rights of women. It was more than 144 years after the signing of the Declaration for this nation to grant voting rights to women. For more than half the population of the country, Independence day was August 26, 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution finally granted women the right to equal participation in the political process.

There are many in today’s political and media circles who would argue that we have to choose between liberty and equality. The bitter polarization portrayed by the media emphasizes extremes and denies the spirit of the founders of our country. If you were to listen to the media, you might come to believe that we are a nation with only two points of view: On the one hand are the promoters of equality who are said to be bent on inserting government into every aspect of our lives and suffocating individual responsibility and effort. On the other hand are the promoters of liberty who are beholden to the rich, committed to the survival of the fittest and indifferent to the basic human needs of everyone except themselves.

The characterizations are, of course, false. We are not a nation of “either-or.” We are a nation of “both-and.” The framers of the Declaration of Independence got it right. The pursuit of liberty without equality is a dead end. Not only would equality be crushed, liberty also would be denied. The same is true of the pursuit of equality without liberty. It does not exist. Only when both liberty and equality are seen to be of equal value is progress made on either front.

The poisoned climate of contemporary American politics is not always honest about history. People are quick to claim that their political causes are consistent with the ideals of the nation’s founders. Since unfair taxes and excessive regulation are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, some claim that the founders were completely anti-tax and in favor of complete deregulation. Because the Declaration mentions denial of fair trials and acts of violence against citizens, some claim that the founders were advocating the role of government in providing for the health and welfare of all citizens. It is often the result of complex thinking that others will quote only part of an idea and claim that their part contains the entire truth.

Today, as we celebrate our nation’s Day of Independence, I am grateful for the complex ideas of our founders and their ability to hold in tension concepts that seem, on the surface, to be on opposition. They have given us an amazing document, worthy of regular reading. The document isn’t perfect. The people who crafted it were not either. We have had to revise our thinking on the role of women, indigenous Americans, and the descendants of former slaves in our quest for freedom and equality. But the crafting of the document was a major leap forward in the evolution of human governments and of our thinking about the role of government in our lives.

Sometimes people rise above history and offer the highest and best of humanity. Perhaps the time has come for the participants in the divisive and bitter disputes that polarize our nation to rise above the fray of the current battles and be reminded of the high and lofty ideals to which we together aspire.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.