It is indeed the last four days of the OB Rag writing contest. Given that we’re nearing the 250th anniversary of American independence, the topic is: “What the 250th anniversary means today … living under Trump.”
Send 500 to about 1,000 word entries to us at our email: obragblog@gmail.com (The best way is to simply paste the essay into the text of an email and send it to us.) All entries will be judged by a panel of citizen journalists and professional writers. The deadline is 9 p.m. Saturday, July 4th. (Maybe you weren’t inspired until the actual day was upon you — .)
We’ve had several entries so far, two of which we’ve already published here — anonymously.
The winning essay writer will be awarded $100.00 to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.
All entries will be posted in the Rag over the next few days — and the winning essay will be announced after the July 4th weekend. The posts published leading up to the deadline will be “anonymous,” that is, readers will not be able to discern the identity of the individual writers until after the contest. Readers can, of course, voice their opinions as to the best essays.
To be valid, an entry must include name and street address of the writer — which will not be disclosed publicly. Applicants must live within the City or County of San Diego.
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Walt Whitman
The Declaration of Independence is a statement written by Americans for the world. It proclaims that human dignity stands above government, rights are not invented by rulers, and political power is legitimate only when it serves the people.
In a little more than 1,300 words, written by men who had declared themselves in rebellion against the most powerful empire on earth, America announced more than its separation from Britain. It offered a blueprint for the progress of human governance.
This singular political manifesto begins:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Then comes its second and most famous sentence:
“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.”
Other countries have national holidays that commemorate revolutionary triumphs, military victories, or the glory of the state. America, on its birthday, celebrates a document that states we as humans are entitled to rights no government can abrogate.
The Declaration of Independence was a charter and a manifesto. In practical terms it was a memo: a hastily drafted, feverishly edited, hand-copied piece of committee work. And yet it became something far greater. It is poetry, philosophy, and polemic in just over 1,300 words.
At the center of it all stands that second sentence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
Those words still astonish. They move from a theory of knowledge to a vision of the good. The Declaration does not appeal to kings, parliaments, precedent, tradition, or inherited privilege. It appeals to truth itself.
Human equality is not presented as a favor granted by government. It is presented as a fact government is required to recognize.
That was true in 1776, and it is true today.
“…that all men are created equal…”
This is the moral imperative of the Declaration. The founders did not merely make a claim about America. They made a claim about humanity.
The words were written by imperfect men, in an imperfect nation, at a time when the country did not yet live up to the full meaning of its own promise. Slavery existed. Women were excluded from political equality. Native peoples were not treated as equal members of the human family. The contradiction was real. But the principle was revolutionary.
The Declaration planted a standard by which America would forever be judged. Every later struggle for freedom, abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, religious liberty, equal protection under law, would return, in one way or another, to this sentence.
It does not say that equality is earned. It says human beings are created equal.
“…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
The Declaration does not say these rights come from Congress. It does not say they come from a king, a court, a majority, or the permission of the powerful. It says they are endowed by a Creator, by an authority higher than government.
That is the radical claim.
Government does not create human rights. Government either protects them or violates them.
The word unalienable means these rights cannot rightly be taken away, sold, surrendered, or erased. They belong to human beings because they are human. They exist before the state. They stand above the state. They limit the state.
This is America’s answer to the oldest political temptation in the history of mankind: the belief that might makes right.
The Declaration says the opposite. Right comes before might. Justice comes before power. Human dignity comes before government.
“…that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The first of these is Life.
The miracle of life is not treated as a gift from government. It is prior to government. The purpose of political order is therefore not to dominate life, cheapen life, or dispose of life, but to protect it.
A decent government must secure the lives of its people and preserve the conditions under which future generations may live freely. We inherit life, and we are responsible for those who come after us.
Then comes Liberty.
In 1776, liberty was an ideal yet to be fully realized, but tyranny was a fact the colonists knew well. The Declaration spends much of its text describing tyranny in exacting detail: taxation without consent, the suspension of legislatures, obstruction of justice, standing armies kept among the people, and power imposed without representation.
The Declaration does not define liberty abstractly so much as it shows us its opposite.
Liberty means that government is not master and citizen is not subject. Liberty means power must be justified. Liberty means the people are not the property of the state.
The invocation of self-evident truths and inherent rights is therefore a warrant for the destruction of unjust rule. It is a rhetorical erasure not only of the divine right of kings, but of every political system that treats power as its own justification.
Finally comes the pursuit of Happiness.
In the Declaration, the pursuit of happiness does not mean mere pleasure. It means the right to seek a meaningful and flourishing life.
Part of being human is the natural right to shape one’s own life: to choose one’s work, beliefs, relationships, property, community, and path without unjust government interference. The Declaration does not promise that everyone will be happy. It insists that government exists to protect the freedom by which human beings may pursue happiness.
That phrase gives the sentence its remarkable humanity. Life is existence. Liberty is freedom. The pursuit of happiness is purpose.
Together, they describe not merely survival, but the possibility of a fully human life.
That is why the Declaration still matters.
It begins with “We,” but it speaks beyond America. It does not say that rights are invented by governments, granted by monarchs, or borrowed from tradition. It says they are inherent. They belong to human beings before government ever enters the scene.
America’s birthday celebrates not merely independence from Britain, but the birth of a political idea: that government exists beneath human dignity, not above it.
The United States, at its best, is the effort to make that sentence real.
That is what Whitman meant when he called America “the greatest poem.” Not that America is perfect. Not that its history is free of contradiction. But that America is an unfinished work of human possibility, rough, restless, democratic, self-correcting, and always reaching toward the promise written at its birth.
The Declaration of Independence is the first great stanza of that poem.
Today I am alive to celebrate 250 years of my countryman’s struggle to implement what our Creator hopes for humanity.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, GOD BLESS US ALL!
July 4th, 2026 Rich Riel