I’d add “freedom from the past.” Our founding fathers bucked tradition and challenged the divine right of kings. Our burden is to continue to challenge traditions and assumptions, even in the face of those who call us disloyal for challenging “sacred” ideas. It would be disloyal to their memory not to.

There not many changes that anyone can make to our founding fathers drafting of the Declaration of Independence. I made a few changes to reflect the current situation in our United States of America.

http://myfightfordemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-declaration-of-independence-2007.html

Declaration of Independence
[Adapted In The United States Of America July 4, 2007]

The Unanimous Declaration of the Citizens United States of America From the George W Bush Administration, Corporate Control, Shadow Government, Right Wing Main Stream Media and The Military Industrial Complex

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Congress to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation With Signing Statements till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to Obey them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has Divided representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; With Voter Caging and Suppression of Votes, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to Increase the population of these states; for that purpose
Ignoring the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and Lowering the conditions of Seeking Employment In The U.S.A, Therefore Driving Down The Wages Of The Working Class.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He Has Misled The American Citizens To Invade A Sovereign Nation To Gain Control Of Their Oil Resources At The Expense Of Taxpayer Funds And The Lives Of Our Young Men And Women In The Military.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with Corporations And The Free Press to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off FAIR trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on While Lowering Taxes On The Most Wealthy Among us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of Constitutional laws in a neighboring States, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these States:

For taking away our Freedoms, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For Hamstringing our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war Against Foreign Nations.
He has Ignored Our Citizens On Our Ravaged Gulf Coasts, Torn Down Our Educational System, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our Fellow Citizens And Citizens Of Other Nations taken captive In All Lands to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections Of Foreign Nations, and has endeavored to bring on the Civil Discourse In Iraq And The Middle East Oil Producing Nations, whose known Rule Does Not Conform With Our Democratic System.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A President, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the Leader of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our Republican brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our Disappointment With Them. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the Citizens of the United States of America, in Objection To The Current Administration Are , assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these States, solemnly publish and declare, that these united Citizens are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the George W Bush Administration, and that all political connection between them and the state of Corporate Oligarchy, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

You know, "life, liberty and property" is the way John Locke put it. So it's not like North is making up that formulation out of whole cloth.

I have no idea what putting freedom in the property rights box means.

And for many Enlightenment thinkers, e.g. Locke, the right to property was quite important.

Could you point out in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence where we are alloted a freedom from want and fear, to "become who we really are," "develop our talents."

I'm all for this stuff, but this is laughably post-modern of you, e.g. "our story is every bit as true as their story." So both your story and their story are true at the same time? Then how do you claim the Progressive/Liberal world view is better?

Sorry to nitpick, but this post is simply so koombaya-ish it's just silly.

Mr. Jensen: I like freedom from the past, that's great. And ronmccallie, that's great. I agree that we need more independence as well as interdependence.

Matt: Koombaya-ish! Well that's a new one for me. And yep, both stories are true. America is about both independence AND an ethic of connectedness. I don't see how that's remotely impossible or even particularly post-modern any more than the statement that "good and bad things have happened in American history."

And nope, expanded rights like these aren't in the Constitution or the Dec of Independence. The question is whether we're going to have a politics built on expanding substantial freedom, or one that serves to constrain and limit them in the defense of moral orders. If that's Koombaya-ish, light the campfire and pass the marshmellows.