While there is plenty of news in this week’s edition, the focus of what follows is the thread that stitches together history and future: America will celebrate its 250th birthday this week.
Hushed discussions regarding what to do about government control had been circling since the Stamp Act of 1765, but that all changed when a relative nobody named Thomas Paine published Common Sense on January 10, 1776. It moved people, and while it was powerful work, its power stemmed from what was, in many ways, an articulation of shared grievances.
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil,” wrote Paine. “In its worst state, an intolerable one.”
This pamphlet, in so many ways, stands almost equally important to the Declaration of Independence that followed and the Constitution that resulted through a revolutionary success.
Common Sense was a fewer than 50-page call-to-action. The colonists heeded that call. They shared thoughts, took action, and engaged in discussion and debate from taverns to kitchen tables to the chambers of the Continental Congress.
Six months later, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee delivered a resolution to that Congress, proposing that the United Colonies should be free and independent states. That resolution passed, and a committee was formed to oversee the drafting of what we celebrate this week: the Declaration of Independence.
They collectively agree to commit treason. Not everyone in the room was happy about it. Kings and dictators weren’t either. It started a trend after all.
The French Revolution in 1789, the Haitian Revolution in 1791, and even the desire for independence in America’s southern neighbor, when Mexico declared its independence in 1813 all came as a result of America’s success, one that was nothing more than a bold experiment in self-governance.
It still is. The Declaration of Independence included “…truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”, let us not forget a large portion of the document was a list of grievances, as well as the result of them.
Within the Declaration, other truths are written: “…that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed…” Which means that as long as a majority of us can still buy groceries and pay bills, we are more likely to tolerate the government’s tomfoolery amongst themselves — even when it is we who are most negatively affected.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Which should serve as a reminder — even today — to each of us from the nation’s White House to the county’s courthouse that we, as citizens, do have our limits.
From January 1776’s publication of Common Sense to that July’s submission of the Declaration of Independence, We the People knew what we wanted and where we were going.
Twenty years later, in 1796, after two terms in office, George Washington left the presidency and imparted a bit more common sense, encouraging future generations about the necessity of diligent maintenance of self-governance and warning us about the dangers to it — dangers of our own making.
I recently heard a quote from the dean of Columbia Journalism School, William Jelani Cobb, who said: “History is interred in the shallowest of graves. It is always closer to the surface than we recognize.”
And sure enough, whether in Washington, D.C. — or perhaps more importantly to Texans, the Capitol in Austin — if you brush away just a few inches of historical topsoil and you’ll unearth the truth of today, which was written 230 years ago.
In George Washington’s farewell address, he warned future generations: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism… … The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
Washington’s warning was not only about national government, although it resides there too. We read about faction, revenge, despotism versus public liberty, then aim our attention at the White House, Congress, cable news, and whatever daily outrage happens to be setting fire to the national conversation.
But those dangers are just as prevalent at the state level in Texas. And it is the state of Texas that often has the most negative effect on our way of life where we live along the modern-day Texas Frontier.
From unfunded mandates to hamstringing local control in our schools, hospitals, and county governments, it seems the legislative representatives in Austin truly believe we can no longer self-govern in our frontier communities.
And as people would rather spend time drafting petty remarks void of grammatical correctness, let alone common sense, it makes me wonder if the legislators are correct.
Those who signed the Declaration of Independence faced a firing squad or hangman’s noose — if they were to be so lucky — by signing the document. Yet they did it because they believed in it.
Today, we won’t even stand up to our friends, let alone the truth, because we fear digital attacks from behind the veil of anonymous social media accounts. Too many modern-day citizens are simply trading conscience of truth for affirmation of belief.
Maybe that is how self-government weakens.
Not all at once. Not with one tyrant. Not with one bad law.
Maybe it weakens when citizens substitute discussion for outrage, courage for comfort, and public responsibility for private complaint or anonymous finger-pointing.
Washington warned us about faction. Paine reminded us that government, even in its best state, is a necessary evil. The Declaration reminded us that people will tolerate sufferable evils for a long time before they decide enough is enough.
So, as America celebrates its 250th birthday, maybe the question is not whether the founders were right. Maybe the question is whether we still have the courage to prove them right.
Because if we want Austin to respect local self-government, then we had better start practicing it here: in our schools, in our hospitals, in our counties, in our city halls, in our meetings, in our conversations, and in the way we disagree without surrendering truth to faction.
Self-government was never meant to be easy. It was meant to be ours.