Would You Sign the Declaration?

Because the Fourth of July, a national holiday in the United States, is a slow day around my house I have time to read the Declaration of Independence.  What struck me in this year’s reading is how politely the Founders worded their radical manifesto.  Then I began to wonder: would our present day Congress be able to write and sign such a strongly-worded call to arms today? Would anyone sign it today? What if the signers refused to sign? Would the U.S. exist, or would we be an English colony? Or Iran?

Political speech today has fallen on hard times. Character assassination has become so common that the sharp words fall on deaf ears.  We have heard so often that every politician is a lying, thieving cheater that we no longer can know a real criminal politician from a good one.  What we perhaps need is a return to political speech which states the most radical message (“we are starting a revolution to overthrow the king!”) in such polite words as these: “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 the powers of the earth…”  I long for a politician who doesn’t feel compelled to speak and act to the lowest common denominator. Of course, that won’t change until the people stop responding favorably to negative messages.

But even if we could write such words, would anyone sign it? The Founders writing included these religious words: “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”; “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence”.  I wonder if there is any way that our government today would agree to insert such language in any document which would get even a majority to sign, much less a unanimous approval.  (The Declaration was not unanimously approved, and thus the seeds of the later Civil War were planted.) In our nation today there are so many “gods” and so many voices declaring there is no God, would the calculating politicians be able to put their names to the Declaration today? Or would they take a poll and decide the politics of signing the Declaration were too risky to their office?

The signers also said “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”  Who would pledge their life and fortune and honor for America today? Who would publicly show their trust in the providential care of Divine Providence with such a bold pledge?  Would you?  Praise God those 56 signers signed.