'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness'

The crucible of war and the making of Independence Day AlphaNews.org

Share This StoryOn July 4, 2026, we Americans will celebrate the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, a document whose proclamation of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” remains as profound a statement on the human condition now as it was then. In the 250 years since its unanimous passage by the Second Continental Congress, the ideas that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain…

'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'

I re-read the Declaration of Independence last week. It showed me the urgency of continuing that work today.

What the Declaration of Independence Said and Meant

[This year, my annual post celebrating the Fourth of July is drawn from a chapter of Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People, and from a short essay on the same topic, The Declaration of Independence and the American Theory of Government: First Come Rights, and Then Comes Government. It also draws upon Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding.] The Declaration o…

The Declaration of Donald Trump may start the next American revolution

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.

July 4, 1776: Congress Adopts the Declaration of Independence ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776 formally ended a process that had been set in motion almost as soon as colonies were established in what became British North America. The early settlers, once separated physically from the British Isles by an immense ocean, in due course began to separate themselves politically, as well. Barely a decade after Jamestown was founded, the Vir…

Shurtleff: The Declaration of Independence and the Men Who Signed It

Mrs. Wolf, my eighth-grade history teacher in a Boston Public School, ensured that her students not only knew the reasons why the 13 colonies united against Great Britain and declared their independence from Great Britain, but also had her students memorize a good portion of the Declaration of Independence. They also had to know about ... Read more Source