1776 – The 250th anniversary of the egg hatching
An evening pause: Two hundred and fifty years ago today a small group of men gathered in Philadelphia to ratify a very radical document. They called it the Declaration of Independence, with its main purpose to declare to the world the reasons the thirteen North American British colonies wanted to break free from the rule of Great Britain. The job to write it had been given to a committee comprised of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman, but in the end the committee dumped the job on Thomas Jefferson.
He produced a document that will be read for many generations into the future, long after the United States falls into dust, because it outlines the basic fundamentals of freedom, government, and human existence. The full text and some background information can be found here, but all you really need to know is this line:
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.
Americans were declaring to the world that their nation would be built on the idea that its people would be free, and its government’s sole function would be to let them pursue happiness. Think about how simple and almost silly that idea is. And yet, 250 years later, it still rings true, and produces a nation more prosperous and joyous than any nation on Earth.
The song below, called “Hatching an Egg,” is from the 1976 musical 1776. I have posted it many times before, because it is not only a great song, but it is remarkably accurate. It captures the personalities of these Founding Fathers perfectly. We are a nation of freedom-loving eccentrics, founded by individuals as eccentric and as freedom-loving.
Enjoy! And celebrate our anniversary this weekend, as John Adams proclaimed, with “pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
My research on the history of the Revolutionary War military history leads me to believe that the Founders were rather emboldened by American success on the battlefield to that point. With the notable exception of Quebec, the Continental Army was on something of a roll. The only notable defeat to that date had been at Bunker (Breed’s) Hill, and even that amounted to a Pyrrhic victory for the Forces Opposed. The Rebels had secured the Hudson – Lake Champlain waterway, kicked the British out of Boston, put paid to Loyalists in the South, and held Charleston. Not bad for an unranked opponent. The story would be much different, when the British were able to mobilize their revised strategy in late 1776, and into 1777.
“ 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.”
Note, too, that the rights are endowed by their Creator, rather than any government.
This is an important point. If the right had instead been provided by a government, that government would also be able to take them away.
The United Nations treats human rights in that same manner. It grants rights to the people of the world, but Article 29, section 3 of their Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that these rights are granted only at the convenience of the United Nations:
In a quarter millennium, no other government has been brave enough to allow sovereignty to its citizens. Or perhaps I should say that no other populace has realized that the greatness of the United States comes from the sovereignty of the citizens rather than the sovereignty of the government. None has declared themselves to be sovereign, as happened in the United States. This sovereign freedom held by We the People has resulted in American Exceptionalism.
Americans tend to treat life as though anything not expressly forbidden is allowed. Much of the rest of the world operates as though anything not expressly allowed is forbidden.
The American space program is a good example of the difference. Until around 2000, the U.S. government had full control of America’s operations in space, largely through NASA, the military and NOAA. Early on, American space operators were hindered by government policies. Only in the last three decades have some operators started up, and the early ones (Iridium and Globalstar) had serious difficulties. It wasn’t until NASA’s policies changed toward encouraging commercial space operations that private space took off, and in the past decade it has boomed in ways that We the People could hardly imagine in the 1960s. Even science fiction (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey) imagined a limited amount of commercialism in space in the first four decades of the Space Age. The next three decades of the Commercial Space Age should see advancements and expansions that dwarf the imaginations of those mid-aged science fiction stories.
Who could have imagined that anything but a national effort could get us to Mars, but SpaceX is working toward that very goal. The goals that we see from various commercial companies are so much greater than science fiction predicted, and we are only a decade into this Age.
All because We the People have the freedom to do so, because We are the sovereign. And now we are sovereign in space, too.
Other countries are having a seriously difficult time getting their own commercial space companies up and running, and it is because government has not granted the freedoms to their populations that We the People of the United States have by nature.
The Statue of Liberty was supposed to be a beacon of light, spreading liberty and freedom around the world, but it turned into a beckoning of the rest of the world to come to the freedom and liberty of the United States. The wrong lesson was learned.
Let the lessons that rights are natural, not granted by men or governments, spread the same exceptionalism that we have here in the U.S. to the rest of the world.
Fixing the UN’s UDHR would be a good start.
Terrific picture. Many films of comparable vintage have no surviving major cast members but four of the top-billed 18 cast members listed on IMDb are still around including lead actor William Daniels who played John Adams. He’s 99. In descending order of seniority the other three are John Cullum, 96, who played Edward Rutledge, Ron Holgate, 89, who played Richard Henry Lee, and the still-luminous Blythe Danner, 83, who played Martha Jefferson. Daniels was born in March, 1927, a year which subsequently saw Lindbergh fly the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 homers in a single season.
John Adams’ & Thomas Jefferson’s Death
July 4th, 1826
https://youtu.be/nSQ3kiHeDsE
3:41
“In one of the most coincidental and poignant events in American history, Founding Fathers John Adams (2nd President, 91 years old) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd President, 83 years old) both passed away on July 4, 1826.”
Spooky
In my mind, 1776 is always paired off with HBO’s John Adams (2008), albeit with a certain irony given my sense that the one casting decision where 1776 has it over John Adams is William Daniels as Adams himself. Paul Giamatti is a fine actor, but he just doesn’t bring the kind of gravitas that Daniels does. Daniels has a fine singing voice and that doesn’t hurt, either.
Young American children could benefit from watching both productions, though.
“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.”
How the “progressive” Democrats need to rewrite this sentence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women and trans persons are created in equity, that they are endowed by their government with certain conditional rights, that among these are the right to abortion, the freedom to confiscate the property of others more industrious and prosperous than they to the point where they are equally happy.
The 1976 Bicentennial felt even more gloomy.
I turned 10 a couple of months afterward… Logan’s Run was all that passed for science fiction…Star Trek was dead, with Lucas having immense problems with his film.
The mainstream media didn’t really have anyone to contradict them–and how they went on and on about how America’s best days were behind it….the recent withdrawal from Vietnam casting a pall over everything.
President Trump has made an excellent production what with the fair (I wish I could go but I will be working tomorrow…and I don’t think I could walk far anyway).
I still cannot shake this cosmic coincidence that 9/11 turns 25 the same year America turns 250…1/10th the age of our nation ago…a small but significant fraction.
That and you know–you just KNOW—that some nut will try to ruin tomorrow…so I am on pins and needles as I turn 60, as opposed to feeling I was under a lead blanket around age 10 watching Captain Kangaroo.
If I turn 100 (I won’t of course), Star Trek also turns 100 (2066) and it will be 1000 years after the Norman Invasion.
George Gobel once asked:
“Did you ever get the feeling that life was a black-tie event and you were a pair of brown shoes?”
I would make a general comment that the Bicentennial in 1976 was, for me, a very exciting year, despite the crummy economy and the accelerated collapse of the industrial mid-west that was going on at the time.
Today, I would put forth that 1/2 the Country appears to hate America, but they refuse to leave, they refuse to shut up, and they actively undermine everything at every turn, and demand that I smile and pay for it.
I hope every Democratic Socialist that runs for office, gets elected. Votes thought things were bad under the pseudo-Socialist Democrats, wait until they experience the real thing. And no, we don’t want you when you flee. You voted for it; you live it. America is a real-life choose-your-own-adventure. 5000 years of written History, and you still chose poorly.
I don’t think it’s anywhere near half the country. The Democrats have been able to make it appear so with their institutionalization of election theft and theft of taxpayer money to prop up their project, but the ongoing takeover of the Party by the Democratic Socialist fifth-column is going to run smack into the destruction of both the Democrat’s corruption-industrial complex and their century-plus of running the “civil service” as an adjunct to their Party. The next few years will be spicy but I don’t think the neo-Bolsheviks are going to win.
“The next few years will be spicy but I don’t think the neo-Bolsheviks are going to win.”
No; I think that this Socialist Moment is a dead-cat bounce.
It is late enough to speculate as to how tomorrow’s events might be disrupted without putting ideas into peoples heads–but soon enough to prevent any plots.
Here in Birmingham, we have 707-based tankers among other planes. All it would take is a nut to deviate just a tad.
I imagine that metal detectors and drone jammers will be in effect.
A decade or two back, one of the Mercury capsules was fished out of the drink–but they tossed the SOFAR bomb back overboard. That–or just a pipe bomb–might fit nicely into one of those pneumatic pumpkin chunkers that were all the rage around that same time.
One of those might be parked outside the perimeter…lobbing IEDs into the crowd. It would fit right in, as many of those devices were festooned with flags painted onto its accumulators.
Fentanyl loads would look quite festive in this Black Sunday exercise, so if you see Bruce Dern….
My best memory of 1976 was rebuilding a 150 year old log cabin in my town. I was only 10.
12 scouts spent their weekends working light duty on the work sight. We carried slate shingles to a storage container, all the trim wood into the container, kept on order and numbered. All the windows kept safe and sent off to be rebuilt by a local company.
Stripped the logs of 150 years of chinking and filler.
Helped strip the original trim back to natural wood. Then filled, repaired and repainted back to its first color.
We even found a large pile of slate shingles from the last reroof which where eventually used on the project.
The house was finished and rededicated on July 4th 1976.
The 12 of us got bronze challenge coins, patches and letters from the scouts, We even got small gold coins from the state. All dated 1779-1976.
Speaking of projects—the individual here is trying to recreate the B-36 cockpit:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=voSg1nnJ4t0&pp=ugUEEgJlbtIHCQlMCwGHKiGM7w%3D%3D&ra=m
I also remember seeing a program where these huge busts of American Presidents languished in a field after the shuttering of a patriotic attraction.
It just angers me that the Bill Gates of the world will go to Epstein island but won’t shell out funds to worthy projects.
Tinkerers, special effects model makers….these are the Ben Franklins of today…it isn’t just the parchment and powder-wig set that deserve respect.