Declaration Of Independence And The Equality For All
Declaration of Independence was a legitimate formal paper that proclaimed to the world the reasons that led the 13 colonies to disconnect from the British Empire and uphold few promises of the Declaration of Independence; 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' The critical points to be noted here:
- People have unquestionable Inviolable rights including life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
- All men are designed equal.
- Individuals have a civic duty to guard these privileges for themselves and others.
From my perspective, the Declaration of Independence did not lead to equality for all, although it did provide an inspiring start towards equality but does not fully apply in today's US and that time too as most of the Founding Founders had slaves at the time of Declaration and they did not free them. Even to this day, we are still far behind those promises and as you see around world there is still inequality, women are still fighting for their rights, gender pay gaps and so many things. The word 'liberty' does not purely mean freedom from imprisonment. There is no liberty in penury, in starving, and in joblessness. There are still wealthier people who controlling the poor people. For example, how is it possible to cut services to the poor and treat them like they do not deserve to be here?
Furthermore, same for the pursuit of happiness right; authorities still control the personal right of people related to happiness like forcing women to bear children when they do not want to, prohibiting gay people from living freely in our society, we see straight people in totally different perspective than gay people, and even stopping religious people to practicing freely. Right now, people who are not white are scared to live freely to pursue their happiness as people are judging to see your color. Where in the world does it say in the Declaration of Independence that people who are not white cannot live freely or they do not have any rights at all? However, I do believe that we can still work on ourselves to improve as we have sacrificed our gore and treasure to conserve the world from despotism.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/declaration-of-independence
http://neatline.dclure.org/neatline/show/declaration-of-independence
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/bdsdcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(bdsdcc02101))
