In the past week we have seen two important holidays: Canada Day and Independence Day. The United States and Canada were founded on distinct political histories: revolution and counter-revolution. The U.S. was a great experiment born out of a rebellion built on the premise that the King should not impose taxes on free men without their consent. They articled their views in an open declaration:
"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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..."
The "new guards" were created in their written constitution that described the way power would be divided among branches of government so that no branch could become too powerful. They constructed a rule of law that was built on the idea of individual liberty and freedom. The United States government was not born from the divine right of Kings. There was no supreme ruler in the plan. Men were meant to watch over each other as members of institutions: the Congress, the Presidency and the Courts to see that no abuse of power took place. But the experiment required that men were themselves moral and so, even though we recognize that religion is separate from the state apparatus, the civil society was expected to be built from a moral basis. The great 19th century French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "...for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith..."
Canada was not born in the same way. It was created to respond to the American experiment and to curb fears that the U.S. would annex the colonies. Its counter-revolutionary political development was a mixture of establishing the known conservative traditions of the British Crown with some new structures that took account of the enormity of the land base and the existence of the tensions between the English and the French. So Canada developed a hybrid constitution: part written that established a government like that of Britain as well as a federal state and part unwritten to recognize the common law tradition of Great Britain. Among other things, the constitution also recognized the French civil law tradition. Canada was not created out of the same concern for liberty or individual freedom as was the U.S. and thus our histories have diverged.
The words of the American Declaration of Independence frame out an allegiance to freedom and the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some weeks ago I wrote that there are individuals in some parts of the world who do not believe in liberty. What I did not say was that there are many more who would give their lives for a taste of the freedom Americans enjoy.
In many of the Mexican border-states we see the lure of freedom personified. The U.S. cannot control the migrants who enter illegally in hope of a better life. The Declaration of Independence is like bait to those who do not have freedom or worse who have no hope of knowing freedom. President Obama sent out a stern warning to migrants not to send their children to the United States unaccompanied and illegally but anyone who assumes that individuals without choices will act rationally has not carefully thought about the almost irrational nature of the American experiment. It is, in fact, the American dream that is celebrated every Fourth of July.
