GDZeus posted about Trump's featuring the American Declaration of Independence today. That post prompted me to write a comment, which I've reproduced here with minor editing. Thank You, GDZeus, and Thank You President Trump.

Perhaps the most famous sentence in all of political history:

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.

America wasn't fully living up to that even while the Declaration was being written, nor has it ever since. But the stunning, soul-stirring TRUTH of those words fired the imagination of people around the globe, setting off a Great Awakening that continues to this day.

America did, indeed, work to live up to the sentiment within the mores of the time, and to change those mores (conventions) to better align with the words of the Declaration, fighting to end slavery and finally succeeding, and more.

America was the beneficiary of that sentence for centuries, as millions here and abroad believed in their hearts -- WANTED and NEEDED to believe -- that here, at last, was a large nation that acknowledged, protected, and fought to PROTECT those rights, for "all men" -- because the truth of our equality (AS human beings, deserving of having our rights respected so long as we respect others), is impossible to deny.

America was the Shining City on the Hill for THAT and for that alone. Our growing wealth added to our luster, and was further proof that a society that respected all person's rights was a society that prospered.

Note that our Declaration is clear that ALL MEN (meaning "ALL PEOPLE") -- even NON-AMERICANS -- deserve to be treated with respect. Some rights -- the right to American citizenship, in particular -- are reserved to the American people and to those the nation grants citizenship to, an important process that must ensure new citizens understand and agree to ALSO respect the rights of others and to obey her laws.

But the right to be treated as a human being, worthy of honest and decent treatment until proven otherwise, should and must remain a core value, lest we become something less than what we all hope and expect America to be.

A further note: if America is, indeed, a Christian nation -- and despite not every Founder and certainly not every citizen being a self-identified or practicing Christian -- America WAS (for the most part) founded on principles consonant with Christianity (and with the Earthly principles of anything I would call a True Religion, but that is another story).

Treatment of ALL humans as worthy of respect (again, until proven otherwise) is the bedrock principle that America MUST cling to.

I view these two verses from John (below) as ROUGHLY EQUIVALENT to the first sentence of the American Declaration of Independence -- and that, I believe, is why the Declaration has such power:

John: 
13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 


13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.