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Yesterday we celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which must be the most successful document ever produced by a committee.
One must grant that his particular committee -- Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- boasted an abundance of intellectual horsepower. It was Jefferson who wrote the Declaration, with the rest of the committee proposing a few changes before it was submitted to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which made more changes.
One might wonder how the Declaration would fare if it fell into the hands of a modern committee:
When in the Course of human Events ...
[Clearly this is specist, elevating human
events
above sylvan events or cetacean events. Lose the
human.
]
... it becomes necessary for one People ...
[To say one People
deliberately obscures our
diversity. This should refer to our glorious mosaic, or
perhaps a rich tapestry.]
... to dissolve the Political Bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers
of the Earth the separate & equal Station ...
[separate and equal
sounds too much like
separate but equal,
which has bad connotations.
Let's rephrase this.]
... to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, ...
[Why Nature's God
instead of just God?
This might appeal to tree-huggers and secular humanists,
but it could alienate major segments of the market we need
to reach if this is going to fly.]
... a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind
...
[Hey, we're the United States of America. We act on our
own. We don't need to pander to the Opinions of
Mankind.
Delete this feel-good fuzzy-thinking
internationalism.]
... 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 inherent and unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, & the
Pursuit of Happiness:...'
[Pursuit of Happiness
sounds rather libertine. We
should stick with John Locke's formulation of life,
health, liberty, or possessions.
]
[Agreed on possessions, though we should change that to
property.
However, proclaming an unalienable right
to health could lead to socialized medicine, so we need to
cut that from Locke's phrase.]
[If right to Liberty is unalienable, how can anyone be imprisoned, no matter how heinous the crime? We need to scratch this, too.]
[When does right to Life take effect? Fertilization, quickening, breathing, reaching of age of majority? We need precision here.]
...That to secure these Rights, Governments are
instituted among Men,...
[Too much about Rights here -- what of public duties and responsibilities?]
...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, & to institute new Government,
laying it's Foundation on such Principles, & organizing
it's Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety & Happiness....
[Whoa. This is sedition. We definitely need to dial this back a few notches.]
Back in the day, Jefferson was perturbed by the
revisions that came from his fellow committee members, as
well as these mutilations
made by Congress.
But for a committee, they did a pretty good job. To put it another way, can you imagine a modern congressional committee coming up with something so inspiring and enduring?
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