About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
Silent Cal could pack a heck of a wallop in a single paragraph. Self-government reached its apogee with the Declaration and can only fall from that point. It is great how he tosses out that line about totalitarian regimes that clothe themselves in the language of democracy [oops, I didn't copy that part]; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on. It is a telling point that this practice persists 90 years later.
Interestingly, Coolidge was a contemporary with the original Progressive Movement that morphed into Liberalism and has now reclaimed the Progressive label (cf . Hillary Clinton). Progressives want more power for government and therefore less to the people. They want to progress back to the good old days when these pesky voters didn't demand Brexit, upend immigration (i.e. voter importation) laws, oppose Amnesty, or grouse about spending. Government could get so much important stuff done if the rubes in flyover country would just shut up and realize it was for their own good. Ah, the arrogance of power.
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