The Declaration of Independence was published by the Second Continental Congress on this day in 1776. Their audiences were the American colonists, to justify our call to arms, and Britain’s enemies, to assure them of our intent.
Thomas Jefferson’s preamble, with his famous proclamation that all people are equal before God (an argument he first used years earlier in a court case seeking freedom for a slave), was aspirational and marked the apex of the Enlightenment. It is particularly timely now as we are living through the nadir of post-modernism, when the search for truth and equality are under seemingly the worst threat since the day the Declaration was published.
