To Some On This July Fourth, These Truths Aren't Self-Evident

2025-07-03 01:09:53

(MENAFN- Asia Times) “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.”

On the Fourth of July, we celebrate the passage in 1776 of the Declaration of Independence, whose second paragraph opens with these lofty words. Americans revere the Declaration both for its role in the nation's founding and as a summary of the nation's ideals.

Our nation's founding took place during a historical period known as the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. In that heady era philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau were espousing new ideas that found expression in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It's no exaggeration to say that Enlightenment-era ideas fueled the American revolution, as well as the French Revolution a few years later. They include beliefs in:

the power of human reason to understand the world and in mankind's ability to make continual progress;
the importance of individual liberties and rights;
the social contract, by which individuals gave their consent to be governed, and cannot legitimately be governed without that consent;
the rule of law and the equality of individuals before the law;
limitations on the powers of governments;
religious freedom, but also the separation of church and state;
the need to challenge traditional authority.

Many Americans share those beliefs; for many of us they're almost conventional wisdom. But in the Enlightenment's heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries, when absolute monarchs ruled France, Austria and other European countries, they seemed radical. (Most of the Enlightenment philosophers, it should be said, were reformers, not revolutionaries.)

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