The results have been exceptional, too.
The US does indeed have plenty of problems, but those problems are usually traceable to neglecting those founding principles.
Of course, Jefferson's words established no basis in American law. It was signed before America existed. The Treaty of Paris ending the war established America only as a sovereign country, not a free one. (We were free of monarchy only). In fact, the intended audience for both documents was international, not national.
Never a legal document, the Declaration was mostly two things: advertising -- in the hope that enemies of England might give us money in order to annoy King George, and cheerleading -- in the hope America's troops wouldn't lose heart at the slow pace of the war and its woeful prospects, and desert, as many did.
We continue to harken to the Declaration only because the pretty words make it easier to dismiss proofs of contradiction like slavery and wars of adventure.
BTW, the Constitution was amended to outlaw slavery. That counts.
Unless you're black. Or female. Or Asian. etc.
Why does this founding myth persist?
Being Asian in Asia?
Do they have the same freedoms? Face the same discrimination?
If your measure is perfection than no country meets your standards.
The criticism that the Constitution didn't go all the way in the first go is a bit unreasonable. People forget how far it did go. For example, it rejected the notion of a nobility class. It explicitly rejected establishment of a state religion. We forget how exceptional this was at the time, we just take it for granted.
Isn't the legacy of these 'founding principles' tarnished from the fact that many of the founding fathers owned hundreds of slaves? We are still within a living generation of segregation in southern states, an injustice that owes directly to how the founding fathers applied those principles.
[1] this did not use to be the case, the Athenian democracy had no qualms about slavery
Is the US an imperfect implementation of those principles? Yes.
Does that invalidate those principles? No.
Has the US done a pretty good job of implementing those principles? Yes.
Also, pretty absurd to blame founding fathers for segregation laws centuries later. People who made these laws were responsible for those laws.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...
They’re so vague that we find some people trying to decipher what someone living in in the 1700s would think about society today instead of updating our laws and principles to suit modern times.
Convoluted example: “Well smartphones didn’t exist in 1776, so you don’t have a right to pursue happiness on that medium”.
It’s so frustrating to see such partisan gridlock where the voice of the actual citizens are not heard and translated into laws and regulations.
I don’t know what my point really is, but I guess I’m saying it’s not so simple. We can’t boil it all down to a sentence or two.
> undemocratic minority rule enshrined in the Constitution.
The purpose of that is to protect the underlying rights of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I.e. the sheep is protected from the two wolves voting on what's for dinner.
None of the nice thoughts that are in the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply to people not recognized as fully human beings (women/non-white males), if we go by the originalist mindset prevalent in the legal world now. We can't have it both ways, interpreting the Declaration of Independence in the broadest possible modern sense, then interpreting the Constitution in the meaning of the writers and state of the nation in 1789 when it was ratified.
The majority normally never needs to have its rights protected. The majority serves itself. Minorities are who need protection.
Instead, we have the Supreme Court just make shit up.
But leaving it unsaid is more convenient all around.