It was David versus Goliath: a world imperial power against a smaller, disheveled, less armed, and much poorer opponent who, believing that they had been oppressed long enough, openly declared their independence from the power that had so long subjugated them. In no uncertain terms, their leader announced their intentions with this memorable line: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, [and that] among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Most people would assume that the above paragraph is referring to the American Revolution, when the American colonies proclaimed their intention to break free from Britain, and that the famous lines came from the Declaration of Independence, penned in 1776 by (mostly) Thomas Jefferson.

That assumption, however, would be wrong, at least partly. The lines are, of course, from the Declaration of Independence, but were uttered in a speech on September 2, 1945, before tens of thousands in Hanoi, Vietnam. The man who quoted them? Ho Chi Minh, the communist and nationalist leader of North Vietnam, who—with those two sentences—proclaimed their intention to oust the French, who had colonized Vietnam for about a century. Nine violent years later, with the defeat of French general Christian de Castries’ forces at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, Ho Chi Minh succeeded. Ironically, having taken France’s place, the Americans were thrown out as well, in 1975, by Ho’s communist successors.

That a document written at 700 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by a wealthy landowner from the eighteenth-century English colony of Virginia, would be quoted by a communist rebel 169 years later at Ba Dinh Square, in Hanoi, 8,600 miles away—
testifies to the Declaration of Independence’s astonishing longevity and reach. And this year, as the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of its signing, what lessons could we today, in a world radically different from the one Jefferson wrote in, draw from this plea for independence?

overture to revolution

Before the American colonists revolted, Europeans had been settling the “New World” for seven centuries, starting with Leif Eriksson, who came from Iceland in about AD 1000. Since then, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492, who reached the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic and Haiti), the Europeans—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedes—kept coming. And, of course, so did the English, whose first permanent settlement was Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

Jamestown was, purely, a business venture, funded by the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company chartered by King James I (hence the name, “Jamestown”)—basically an early form of “venture capitalism.” The settlers came in order to find gold, silver, and other precious metals, as well as grow tobacco and open new trade routes. (The arrival of the Pilgrims and others for religious reasons came later.) The venture at first failed, an economic boondoggle ravaged by disease, starvation, and sporadic hostility from the Powhatan natives. By 1610, only 60 of the more than 500 settlers remained above ground, many barely. Eventually, the Virginia Company of London went bankrupt, but the settlement was saved by resupply ships in 1610 (many of the survivors were already heading back to England). In 1624, having revoked the company’s charter, King James made Virginia a royal colony, and, instead of near extinction, Jamestown and the entire colony started to prosper, especially from tobacco.

The rest, as they say, is history. Over the century and a half after Jamestown, right up to the Declaration of Independence, the colonies matured into a rich, confident, and more self-sufficient society. And it was against this background that increasing acrimony with the mother country led to the revolution that, ultimately, created the United States of America.

taxation without representation

For most of the eighteenth century, though loyal British subjects, the Americans mostly governed themselves. After the French and Indian War, King George was left with massive debt. Believing that the colonists, who benefited from the war, should help pay for it (the average citizen in England was taxed at 25 times the rate of their colonial cousins), London imposed taxes on goods like sugar, tea (which led to the famous Boston Tea Party), and so forth.

Though the Americans argued, not unreasonably, against being taxed without seats in Parliament, had they been given seats, they probably wouldn’t have had enough to make a difference, anyway. Nevertheless, “Taxation with Representation” became a potent talking point, and the more the colonists resisted, the more the British pushed back.

Soon came the Boston Massacre (March 1770), in which the King’s troops killed five colonists, including Crispus Attucks, a freed slave with Native American blood, deemed “the first casualty of the American Revolution.” Next followed confrontations at Lexington (April 1775), and that same day at Concord, where the colonists fought back, forcing a British retreat, the first open battle between England and the Americans. After the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 1775), with the British suffering about a thousand casualties, King George declared that the colonies were in rebellion, and the war was on.

we hold these truths . . .

Against this background, 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson, a delegate at the Second Continental Congress, wrote the first draft of what became known as “the Declaration of Independence.” Though composed of 1,559 words (not counting signatures), the document mostly covered grievances against the mother country. If hearing words like, “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people,” or “We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations,” most people probably would not recognize them. In contrast, these words—“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”—remain among the most famous in the world, despite problems.

First, Jefferson had written that we hold these truths to be “sacred and undeniable” but Benjamin Franklin, wanting the document to be grounded more in rationality than in religion, had it changed to “self-evident.” But nothing is “self-evident” about all men being created equal. All men are not created equal: there are physical and biological differences; different natural talents; they are vastly unequal in social status, in wealth, and in education. What Jefferson meant, instead, is that all men (not women) are created equal in the eyes of the law—a revolutionary idea then, as well as a direct challenge to a society built on hereditary privilege, on a rigid hierarchy, and, of course, on a monarch.

Next, the idea of the “unalienable Rights” to, among other things, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—a phrase modified from a 17th-century philosopher, John Locke—cannot be taken too literally, either. Otherwise, what? If these are “unalienable” rights, especially from God, then no legitimate government can put people to death (life), imprison them (liberty), or stop sadists whose greatest pleasure is torturing cats (happiness). Instead, this clause, like the one before abou “self-evident” truths, must be understood in the immediate context of specific colonial grievances against England and the crown.

a transcendental spin

How, then, did what was basically a policy statement, or even a state paper dealing with unique political and economic grievances, become a “sacred text,” deemed “American Scripture” even—and whose influence has impacted the world?

One reason (perhaps?) is because—unlike the U.S. Constitution (ratified almost 12 years later), which never used the word “God” (in fact, the only time the Constitution mentioned religion was to restrict what the government could do with it)—the Declaration of Independence referred to “Nature’s God,” to the “Creator,” to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” and to “Divine Providence.” And though Jefferson’s notion of God was closer to that of Voltaire than to the apostle Paul, whom he called the “first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus”—the whole appeal of the Declaration was premised on a God who created humanity with inherent rights that governments must not trample on. This transcendental spin, right at the start, helped elevate the document from its immediate political context to a universal proclamation of natural rights.

In his The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, David Armitage (Harvard University Press, 2007) argued that what began as a local protest text had over the centuries influenced independence movements everywhere—from France (1798), Haiti (1804), Venezuela (1811), Israel (1949), Vietnam (1945), and, in 1836, even Texas (claiming independence from Mexico). Few political documents have such a grand geographical and chronological reach.

a quarter of a millennium later

Of course, however lofty the notions, the reality on the ground remains much different. While the ink on words lik “unalienable Rights” and that “all men are created equal” was drying, the majority of signers, Jefferson included, owned slaves—an embarrassing fact not lost back then, either. In 1776 itself, an English abolitionist wrote: “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”¹

In fact, 250 years after July 4, 1776, one can ask if the Declaration’s hopeful ideals have been realized for the majority of the world. Not really. After all, Scripture depicts all humanity, including leaders, like this: “There is none righteous, no, not one” “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; “Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways” (Romans 3:10, 14–16), etc.²

It shows, too. Despite all the majestic pronouncements, whomever the source, subjection is still the sad lot of many. And, until Jesus returns, there will be “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7), including what the prophet Daniel says will “be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time” (Daniel 12:1). The book of Revelation depicts universal end-time persecution, including the death penalty, centering around the question of worship (see Revelation 13).

Christians, meanwhile, must seek to improve life for the suffering masses as much as possible now, and often do a good job of it too. Yet it matters not where, and it matters not when—because even a quarter of a millennium after this “American Scripture” first expressed to the world such lofty and transcendental ideals of rights, life, equality, the whole spiel—those lofty and transcendental ideals, though in some places certainly higher than in others, have barely gotten off the ground.

America at 250 by Clifford Goldstein	From the July 2026 Signs