The Declaration of Independence wrote that, “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.” Aside from the fact that the young congressmen who composed The Declaration did not even consider that women might also have rights, the fact that they realized the rights of enslaved African Americans and Indigenous Peoples equal in a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich white men for so long, was a radical concept.
Eighty-seven years later, the Civil War was fought by southern white men who wanted to return the nation to one where only white southern men held power. As Abraham Lincoln wrote in his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863, the Civil War was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”
The U.S. did “endure,” and continued to challenge and accept that “all men” included African Americans, other peoples of color, and eventually women. (The 19th amendment gave white women the right to vote in 1920. It took 45 years later for all women to secure that right with the passage of the Voting Rights Act). Since then, American men and women have sacrificed their lives in order to defend human equality.
The MAGA policies of this administration and this Republican Party once again seeks to reshape America into a nation in which a few white rich powerful men are better than others. This “One Big Beautiful Bill” is punishing Americans who don’t have enough money to put food on the table or pay for healthcare. American citizens and those who have come to this country to find work because they believed in the promise of America are being arrested and imprisoned because they are not white and rich, or because they question the actions of this administration.
On this Fourth of July, as I reflect on this history, we as Montanans are once again being challenged to decide if the principles that this nation was founded on, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” for ALL who come to live in this nation, are worth fighting for. And as Lincoln asked Civil War Americans, will our nation have a “new birth of freedom” – and that government “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Susan Cahill, Kalispell
Steve Martinez, Kalispell