It was a revealing moment: in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC to mark the first 100 days of his administration, the president of the United States was asked about the framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging in the Oval Office. “What does it mean to you?” Moran asked, in the softest softball that has ever been lobbed over a presidential home plate.
“It means exactly what it says,” Trump said. “It’s a declaration of unity and love and respect. And it means a lot. It’s something very special to our country.”
Certainly any schoolchild, particularly of Trump’s generation, could be expected to be able to call up something about the Declaration of Independence. That it declared independence from Great Britain, for one, and thus inaugurated the national history of which Trump and his enthusiasts are always insisting we must be knowledgeable and proud. That it contains a pithy statement of “truths” that its framers found to be “self-evident,” that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Most famously, among these were held to be “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
