On American Values

What makes a nation like America is more than just a list of laws. We take pride in being better than the monarchies of the world, than the oligarchies of the world, than the theocracies of the world and the tyrannies of the world. To find out what American values are, we must look at the values of the American founders.

On July 4th, 1776, a group of brave men signed their name to a letter to their monarch, King George the Third of Great Britain, saying that they had the right to dissolve their ties with that monarch; that they had ceased to acknowledge him as king. That letter was the The Declaration of Independence. By signing their legal names, they gave proof to the Crown of Great Britain that they were guilty of treason, at least according to the law of the British monarchy they protested. Had they failed in the American Revolution, they would have been hung for signing that letter. Yet, they said, "to this we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." All of the men who signed it, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, had the courage and fortitude to risk their lives for what they believed in. The result was this nation and we owe them not only our gratitude but to follow their example and be good citizens.

Once this nation was founded, they established the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. This contained more than just the rights in the first 10 Amendments. There are rights directly in the body of the Constitution itself too. I'd argue that this, the The Declaration of Independence and other writings by our Founders comprise the foundational values of America.

Here is a brief list of some of these:

• "All men are created equal" (I affirm that this has evolved to mean "humans").
• All men are "endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights". (I'll note that while "Creator" refers to a Divine Creator, it could, and I think necessarily, refers to such a Creator separate from any one Religion's mythology, theology or cosmology.) This is important by itself because it implies that we have many more unalienable rights, just for being human, than the ones listed.
• The unalienable rights that our Creator endowed us with are: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. In essence, I see this as essentially three parts of a whole. We all have the right to live our lives the way we choose to live them. Rather than being serfs and vassels of Feudalism, we are all free to seek happiness for ourselves by whatever path we choose and we are free, moreover, to seek whatever ends make us happy. Now, I think this implies that we refrain from impinging on the freedom of others to seek their happiness too. Obviously, this freedom comes far, far short of, say, murder. This, is implied, though, because what's more important, I think, is that a muderer's intended victim has the unalienable right to be free from being murdered.
• The Writ of Habeus Corpus - You cannot be imprisoned without first going before a court.
• We have the right to be free of bills of attainder. A bill of attainder is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group to be guilty without trial.
• We have the right to be free from ex post facto laws. An ex post facto law is a law that says that something is illegal before the law was written. For example, if I pass a law saying that naming a boy Thomas is punishable by a $100 fine, I can't prosecute parents who already named their sons Thomas. I could only fine parents who name their sons that subsequent to the passage of the law.
• We have the right to freedom of religion
• We have the right to a "wall of separation of church and state" (Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists).
• We have the right to freedom of speech.
• We have the right to freedom of the press.
• We have the right to peaceably assemble.
• We have the right to petition the government for redress.
• We have to bear arms.
• We have the right to refuse to quarter soldiers.
• We have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
• We have the right to only be tried once for a crime.
• We have the right to be free from having to testify against ourselves.
• We have the right to due process in a trial.
• We have the right to retain our property from being taken for public without just compensation.
• We have the right to a speedy and public trial.
• We have the right to a trial by jury
• We have the right to be informed of accusations against us, if we are accused of a crime.
• We have the right to be confonted with the witnesses against us in a trial.
• We have the right to gather witnesses to testify in our favor in a trial.
• We have the right to have a lawyer for our defense.
• We have the right to be free of being held on excessive bail.
• We have the right to be free of being held on excessive fines.
• We have the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
• The Ninth Amendment also hints at other rights that we have, as does the Declaration of Independence. While these are, of course, debatable, I would argue that one of the underlying American values is Freedom itself.

Fundamentally, though, I think the basic American Value is that all of us have the right to take charge of our own lives. That right expends to our religious and spiritual lives, it extends to our participation in politics and it extends to our personal pursuit of happiness.

I urge all Americans to keep these values in the forefront of their thoughts when making political decisions.

Further Reading

The Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution

Copyright © 2010 Ivan Richmond. All rights reserved worldwide.