“…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.”
Above is the last line of the Declaration of Independence. Okay, I admit I didn’t know this until I heard it on the “John Adams” series on TV. Maybe I was listening for something like this given our recent efforts to find out what motives people to be engaged in their community and engaged with their government. But it sure seems like this line is saying that as part of delcaring ourselves independent of English rule, we also are declaring our interdependence on each other. That civic responsibility is a necessity for having independence and freedom.
At the risk of getting to high-brow, I’m bound to point out another quote…this one from Edward Gibbon who was commenting on the decline and eventual collapse of the noble Athenian Code. Gibbons wrote, “In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all–security, comfort and freedom….when the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”
Yikes. Is this a wake up call for us?
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Are you suggesting we…Americans, Carolinians, Mecklenburgers, or whatever… are wishing for freedom of responsibility?
It seems to me that the point Gibbons is trying to make is that we should do all we can to avoid what happened in Athens that destroyed its democracy. This entails protecting our freedom as individuals and as a country by continuing to serve each other as neighbors and co-owners of our communities.