Horowitz: We can no longer celebrate our independence. We must fight for it again.
Eleven years after the signing of the Declaration, many of the same patriots assembled in the same hall in Philadelphia to codify the system of government based on the blueprint of this social compact. During the final day of triumph on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin rose to speak. In his notes on the convention, James Madison captured his words as follows:
Whilst the last members were signing it [i.e., the Constitution] Doct FRANKLIN looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.
Over two centuries later, we have come full-circle, just as the Earth rotates on its axis, and we no longer have a rising sun. We have a sun that has already set. But the good news is that through darkness comes light, and from storm clouds come the growth and sustenance of rain. The same God who birthed us with these inherent rights constantly accords us numerous opportunities in life to defend and renew those rights, just as yesterday’s sunset gives birth to a new sunrise. All we have to do is show up and fight for it.
It won’t be easy, but it wasn’t easy the first time around, when the patriots were in the minority and most were loyalists or indifferent. As John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, the day before he signed the great contract of American sentiment, “I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph.”
“The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” ~Proverbs 4:18
Posted by Daniel Horowitz – The Blaze
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