'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.”

By Pepper Parr

July 4^th, 2026,

BURLINGTON, ON

Marcus Gee, a Toronto Star columnist, had this to say on the day America celebrated its 250^th anniversary.

“ In a few well-chosen words, Thomas Jefferson and his fellow founders managed to express the principles not just of the American Revolution but of the cause of freedom everywhere.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” says the declaration’s most famous passage, “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.”

One needs to read those words a second time to let the strength they convey set in.

Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism and natural rights.

“We could argue all day about whether the United States truly lived up to those ideals, then or later. If all men were created equal, what about Jefferson’s slaves? As Martin Luther King Jr. was to observe two centuries later, when it came to its Black citizens, America failed to deliver on the “promissory note” of its founding document.

“What is indisputable is the impact of those 35 words. As familiar as they are, they still land with freshness and force. “These truths” surely are self-evident – plain and obvious to anyone who can see, hear and think. We are all born equal. We deserve to live our lives in freedom. That right does not have to be bestowed on us. It is “unalienable.” It comes with being human. No tyrant has the right to take it away.

“The “pursuit of happiness” is the phrase in the Declaration that stands out the most. So modern-sounding, so simple. For what does anyone anywhere really want but a chance at happiness, however they may define it?

“The gift America’s founders gave to the world was to conceive a form of government that, for the first time, made such a pursuit possible for large numbers of ordinary people. Based on “the consent of the governed” rather than divine right or brute force, the American formula proved more resilient, adaptable and ultimately stable than any monarchy or autocracy.

“The Declaration of Independence laid the foundation for the most successful exercise in self-government the world has ever seen.

“From a collection of disparate political units on the eastern seaboard of North America, the United States grew into a dynamic nation that spanned the continent, then a military and economic superpower that straddled the globe. For all its sins, crimes and blunders, it has been an unparalleled force for good, what Barack Obama liked to call the one truly “indispensable nation.”

“It saved the democratic world, in turn, from militarism, fascism and communism. It gave the world the airplane, jazz, rock music, the smartphone and the personal computer. Americans have won three times as many Nobel prizes as the second-place nation, Britain. Despite the idiocies of the Trump administration, from self-defeating protectionism to wildly improvident public spending, its innovative, enterprising companies lead the world, most recently in the AI revolution.

“More important than all that, its ideals have stood as a beacon to the world. Even if the stature of the United States has fallen during the current chaos, that beacon still burns. Millions of people around the world look to it hopefully, from the fighting soldier in the trenches of Ukraine to the rebellious student on the streets of Myanmar.

What kind of America will that young boy live in?

“Tarnished as it may be, the American idea as expressed in the Declaration of Independence still means something. As the United States celebrates this clouded birthday, that is worth remembering.”

Worth remembering as well is how the elected leadership has failed the people that elected them.

America has some very hard years ahead of it – they stand a chance of failing as a Republic.

What impact is that going to have on Canada as we struggle to change some of the alignments we have relied upon for at least three decades?

If Prime Minister Mark Carney is right and that the relationship with the United States has ruptured, we will have to find a way to take from the American experience the parts that were really important:    “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.”