Neil Gorsuch's history lesson

With this 4th of July being the 250th anniversary of this great nation's birth, it isn't surprising that a bunch of Independence Day-themed books have popped up. Thus far, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's book is the best children's book on our nation's birth while Bret Baier's book is the best book for adults on Independence Day. Today, though, I'm focused on Justice Gorsuch's WSJ op-ed on what makes our nation great. Justice Gorsuch opened the op-ed by saying "The Declaration of Independence is a short document, not much longer than this essay. Even so, it contains three ideas that shocked the world in 1776: Each of us is born equal; God grants us all inviolable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and 'We the People' have the right to govern ourselves."

Hubert Humphrey once said that the U.S. is the only nation that set happiness as a national goal. That's why he's known as the Happy Warrior:

Those three ideas represent America’s creed. When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration in rooms he rented from a Philadelphia bricklayer, few in Europe believed in them. More than that, many considered them a threat to the existing social and political order. But to the patriots who fought in the long and brutal years of the American Revolution, those three ideas were worth the sacrifice of "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

The Declaration’s three great ideas still speak to us. Really, the Declaration serves as our nation’s report card. At any point in history, the American people can assess how well we are living up to the Declaration’s promises—and what challenges remain. In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her colleagues at Seneca Falls, N.Y., reminded the American people that men and women are created equal. Years later, Abraham Lincoln called on the country to live up to the Declaration’s promises in the face of slavery, secession, and a bloody Civil War. Martin Luther King Jr.—standing before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963—challenged Jim Crow and called on the country to redeem the Declaration’s "promissory note" for all Americans. Our nation will always be a work in progress, but the Declaration stands as a constant reminder of who we aspire to be.

Sunday night, Trey Gowdy interviewed Justice Gorsuch:

Gowdy mentioned that the book was written for children but he thought that it was something that everyone should learn from. During the interview, Justice Gorsuch called the Declaration "the nation's report card." Justice Gorsuch said that we've always been flawed but that we've always kept striving for perfection. That's why the Declaration has been, in Justice Gorsuch's words, "aspirational."

Compare us, in this respect, to Iran. We had slavery, then fought a civil war over it. President Lincoln insisted that we aspire to that "more perfect union." Just a century after the Civil War, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial. He called the Declaration "a promissory note" that needed to be fulfilled. We're still imperfect but we're continually striving for that more perfect union. Thanks to patriots like Hubert Humphrey, that promise was kept by challenging Robert C. Byrd, Al Gore, Sr., and J. William Fullbright. Humphrey was the catalyst in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

By comparison, Iran under theocratic rule uses the Besij to prevent civil rights. Just like with Democrats of the Civil Rights Era, Iran's theocratic rule refuses to change.