With the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a series of events shook and changed the world forever. As the new Republic took shape, the most unusual group of human leaders continued to place liberty ahead of a grab for power. Instead of establishing a new monarchy or other familiar form of totalitarianism in which the victors grabbed as much power as they could for themselves, America’s Founders created a new government that had no human precedent.
In 1787, the year of the signing of the American Constitution, Ch’ien Lung of the Manchu Dynasty ruled supreme over the people of China. Protests against his rule were put down by ruthless military force. In Japan, Tanuma Okitsugu exercised totalitarian and corrupt authority over the Japanese. Catherine II was the enlightened despot of all the Russians. King Louis XVI sat on the throne of France. He was soon overthrown and executed in the bloody French Revolution which provided the fertile ground for a tyrant of a new making, Napoleon Bonaparte. Frederick the Great ruled Prussia, and Joseph II was the emperor of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. Some of these great nations still live under despotic forms of rule even today.
In an amazingly short time as measured by the history of world civilization, America outstripped all of these nations in world power and influence – all because a small group of men chose to establish a nation of liberty rather than a nation they could rule. They chose a nation established on their belief in the providential rule of God instead of the terror of man.
"...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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
In 1787, the year of the signing of the American Constitution, Ch’ien Lung of the Manchu Dynasty ruled supreme over the people of China. Protests against his rule were put down by ruthless military force. In Japan, Tanuma Okitsugu exercised totalitarian and corrupt authority over the Japanese. Catherine II was the enlightened despot of all the Russians. King Louis XVI sat on the throne of France. He was soon overthrown and executed in the bloody French Revolution which provided the fertile ground for a tyrant of a new making, Napoleon Bonaparte. Frederick the Great ruled Prussia, and Joseph II was the emperor of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. Some of these great nations still live under despotic forms of rule even today.
In an amazingly short time as measured by the history of world civilization, America outstripped all of these nations in world power and influence – all because a small group of men chose to establish a nation of liberty rather than a nation they could rule. They chose a nation established on their belief in the providential rule of God instead of the terror of man.
"...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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
America is decidedly a grand experiment to hang onto.
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