Image: CrimeDime
“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.”
So begins the Declaration of Independence.
Those words are powerful.
They are also a treasonous declaration that marked the authors as criminals in the eyes of many of their contemporaries.
Each Independence Day, I cannot help but to reflect on the fact that the definition of ‘criminal’ resides in the eye of the beholder. The revolutionaries that we revere (please pardon the pun, dear reader), were not universally acknowledged as heroes. To the loyalists, they were traitors.
Thus, the path from criminal to hero is one which wanders through time and structures of power. History, after all, is told mostly be the victor. Had the British won the war, we might not know their names so well. And the few we did know, would live in our historical imaginations as infamous criminals.
It’s worth remembering, especially on this day, that today’s subversive might just become tomorrow’s protagonist in our cultural legends. Can you imagine what things would be like without the revolutionaries, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Rosa Parks?
And who else would you add to the list? Supporters of abortion rights? Martin Luther King? Supporters of gay marriage? Marijuana legalization advocates?
Happy Fourth of July.
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- How Do We Justify Protecting Free Speech? (crimedime.com)
- Maryland’s Court of Appeals DNA Collection Ruling = [Face-palm] (crimedime.com)
- Full Faith and Credit: Orders of Protection Across State Lines (crimedime.com)
investigator25
July 4, 2012
Reblogged this on JUSTICE FOR RAYMOND and commented:
Good
investigator25
July 4, 2012
Good reminder of what our Independence Day is all about.
Louise Behiel
July 4, 2012
interesting post. As a Canadian, whose country came to independence in a negotiated fashion, the birth of the United States is the stuff of legend. But as you say, your heroes were traitors to Britain. Without meaning to offend, I think the same is true of Christ – he was a rebel in his own time.
thehurtfactory
July 7, 2012
Your is a great blog, always interesting stuff.
Foucault said similar things in Discipline and Punish – what is a crime today is acceptable tomorrow, and what’s acceptable today may be a crime tomorrow. For both country and individual we must strive to hold faith that we are all capable of heroism – even those who may have committed crime. When we write each other off, as people or nations, when we use our power to enchain persons or nations we will not accept, we deny them the capacity for heroism and redemption.