They were far from perfect: a motley group of farmers, preachers, lawyers, and tradesmen, some educated in classical tradition, others with varying degrees of scholarship, if formally schooled at all. The principal players included a gentleman farmer, an eccentric publisher, a marginally successful lawyer, and a reluctant soldier: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and George Washington.In these cynical times, the words they committed to paper are haggled over, criticized, twisted and corrupted by lesser men piteously incapable of understanding even the smallest detail of the document that changed the world. Yes, as a manifesto it assumed too much, excluded too many. By current standards it is throughly racist, sexist, and radical. The eighteenth-century values espoused in the idiom of that era are thought "quaint" among our modern political operatives of either party, and vague enough---let's say flexible enough--- to be used by both sides to suit even their crudest arguments. In my own less-than-humble opinion, letting our "representatives" near it is like giving a hammer to a baby: we may think the better of it, and we might be able to get it back right quick, but in the meantime a hell of a lot of damage will be done.
> It's time we take it back from the pundits and politicians. The Declaration of Independence belongs to the rest of us---we aren't perfect either, but this world wasn't made for angels.

From the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States Of America:

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---That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Government long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are insufferable, that to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

This two hundred thirty two year old imperfect instrument of freedom contains the key to all of our tomorrows, if we have the courage to hold it in our hearts, where nothing and no one can ever take it away from us.

Sent in by David Derr, thanks!

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