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Proud to be an American in 2023
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.
America’s governing document may be the the Constitution, but the soul of the nation was encapsulated eleven years earlier in the Declaration of Independence.
Those words from Thomas Jefferson have reverberated through the corridor of time and stand as a beacon of truth nearly 250 years later.
They’ve been used to correct America when she has strayed from her founding vision. For instance, here’s how the words of Jefferson were used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the most famous speech in U.S. History:
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
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