Our View: The Declaration Of Independence

July 01, 2026

by The Cape Cod Chronicle

When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

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 to 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.

The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, ratified 250 years ago Saturday, were aspirational then, and remain so today. Certainly the Founders meant “all men” to refer to property-owning white males, not the more expansive definition accepted today. The Founders were, of course, a product of their times, and while the Declaration was written as justification for breaking with Great Britain, they no doubt realized that should the young nation survive, their words would be reinterpreted by successive generations.

We are truly fortunate to have inherited those words as our guiding principles. Two hundred and fifty years ago, they created the foundation upon which the people of the 13 American colonies rejected the tyranny of rule by self-proclaimed leaders whose sole purpose was to maintain an empire that failed to respond to a rising tide of opposition and the yearning of a people who sought to control their own destiny. The struggle that followed was difficult, but it turned the world upside down and set the template for self-determination and revolutions through the centuries right down to today. We see, through stories in this week’s edition, how residents of the Lower Cape fought and died for these principles.

Today, the tyranny we are facing is homegrown. As we celebrate the semiquincentennial, we see leaders working to wrest power from the people and invest it in autocrats and oligarchs. We see the equal rights of all men — now understood to mean all people — being eroded in favor of a few white, Christian men, whose consent from the governed is questionable. Today, the right of the people to alter or to abolish government rests in voting, the free exercise of which is under attack, as is the right, enshrined in the Constitution, to freely and peacefully protest.

This special anniversary is a time to remember why our nation was founded, the responsibilities of independence, and the need to safeguard our freedom via the exercise of the rights enumerated by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence.