I disappeared. Sorry!
I really don’t have any excuse to offer for that. But while I was gone, I built a video studio, and I thought I’d at least celebrate Independence Day by reading the Declaration on camera.
If you haven’t read the Declaration yourself yet today, I suggest you either do so or watch my reading. It’s a beautiful, powerful statement of the importance of individual rights—and it’s relevant today, among other reasons, because of the parallels between the charges against George III and the situation we’ve dug ourselves into as Americans. For example, George III is blamed “for depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury”; today, plea bullying deprives us of those benefits in the overwhelming majority of cases.
I reread the Declaration every July Fourth. I also reread Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July speech, and I recommend that to you as well. It is a celebration of the Declaration and a demand that we live up to it. It is easy, the speech reminds us, to be on the right side of battles that were won before your time—Abolition, Mr. Douglass’s great cause, is now one of those—but much harder to be on the right side of those that have barely begun.
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