Message-Id: <8907051828.AA10746@whorf.parc.xerox.com>
From: <bader@roo.parc.xerox.com>
To: vi-aStudents^.pa@xerox.com
Cc: goldstone.pa@xerox.com, vijayb.pa@xerox.com, bader@roo.parc.xerox.com
Subject: the Declaration of Independence
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 89 11:28:20 -0700


When you read the Declaration of Independence, bear in mind that it
was far more than a mere statement of national independence from Great
Britain; it was a statement of grievances against a lack of individual
freedom, against the limitations on freedom of speech and religion and
on economic freedom as well which the British had imposed upon
America.  Behind the Declaration of Independence is an ideal which has
never been fully realized, not even in America, of a nonintrusive
state which permitted full freedom to each of its citizens.  In 1918,
during World War I, a man was sentenced to imprisonment for reading
the Declaration aloud; for its condemnation of an oppressive
government, originally aimed at the British, was just as sound when
aimed at the federal government, which through the Alien and Sedition
Act had limited freedom of speech and which had set up a network of
millions of informers.  The last 200 years have seen the gradual
abolition of many evils: slavery, limitations on the right to vote,
and laws against "bad" speech, which the Supreme Court until 1920 held
was unprotected by the first amendment.  But new evils have also crept
in, like the uncontrollable growth of the federal government, which
levies taxes far greater than those the colonials could have imagined
and whose influence penetrates to virtually every sphere of life.  It
is obvious that the values behind the Declaration of Independence are
badly misunderstood, when sincerely patriotic Americans support
state-sponsored school prayer and when they support laws against
burning the flag without realizing that doing so would abridge freedom
of speech, dishonoring the very values which the flag represents.  The
very nature of freedom is that no authority can set its limits.  We
tolerate speech we find offensive in the knowledge that in so doing,
we safeguard our own freedom, since others may also find our ideas
offensive.  Our first duty as Americans is to ensure that this country
is more free when we leave it than it was when we entered it.


		Lars.