For years, National Public Radio held a July 4th tradition of sharing a reading of the Declaration of Independence during Morning Edition using a montage of the many voices heard on air. At the risk of sounding patriotically sentimental, this was something I looked forward to each year.

It really is quite stirring to hear the Declaration of Independence read aloud, by voices you know and love, accompanied by stirring music. The refreshing flush of pride when you hear, “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” at the end sets the tone for another year. You can still hear it here: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011754245/an-npr-tradition-heres-the-reading-of-the-declaration-of-independence

2021 was the last year NPR performed this annual reading. In 2022, an editorial disclaimer was added to the web pages where you can hear these renditions with voices of the past: 

Editor’s note on July 8, 2022: This story quotes the U.S. Declaration of Independence — a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur.

Since 2021, NPR has not ignored the Declaration; rather than reading it aloud, programs have discussed it. The Declaration of Independence, as stirring and revolutionary a document as it may be, is flawed. In its day, it was what was needed, and it was a reflection of its times. The second paragraph begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” a notion that gnaws at many. 

Abigail Adams, whose husband John was instrumental in the birth of the Declaration, wrote to her husband, who was attending as a delegate to the 2nd Continental Congress (or Congreff, for Stan Freberg fans…) in March of 1776, urging him to, “remember the ladies.” 

They did not, and right off the bat one half of the population was left out of those self-evident truths. 

Much ink has been spilled over the caustic irony of a man who held slaves holding the pen that scratched those words on parchment. 

In 2021, NPR noted editorially,  “…after last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race, the words in the document land differently.” Those protests fall into the general category of “Black Lives Matter” protests, kicked off by protests resulting from the wrongful death of George Floyd, a black man, under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis, MN.

I don’t disagree with NPR’s hand-wringing—at its very root, I understand it. Our founding document is flawed by our current standards. So, too, are our founding fathers. And yet…the Declaration of Independence deserves its annual day of celebration. Flawed? Yes, but the aspirations contained therein have inspired many other oppressed people around the world.

This year, our 250th anniversary of this document, is especially precious. We’ve discussed it, analyzing its flaws and reconciling our conscience with the hypocrisies of the men who set forth the reason for our collection of colonies to become a free nation. In this year, more than any, it’s worth taking the time to read it. Or to hear it read aloud. The beauty of the document lies in its horrible irony: the list of grievances. The delegates signed on to a document that did more than hold truths self evident: they provided receipts. 

Among the 27 enumerated grievances the colonies had with the King, we read that the “refusal of assent to laws,” endeavoring “to prevent the population of these States,” for keeping “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,” for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” the “taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments,” were enough to bring men together to form revolutionary ideas

For a long time, libertarians have rallied around this grievance: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

While NPR stopped reading the Declaration because some of the words in the document “…read differently now,” just those few grievances I quoted above read alarmingly similar today as they did when they were written. Spoiler alert: the conclusion the Declaration reaches after enumerating all 27 grievances is that anyone who does such things is a tyrant.

The Declaration of Independence should be celebrated, every day. Not just on the 4th of July. It is a reminder of what great (yes, flawed, but still great) minds wrought with words, establishing a new idea for what makes a nation.

This document does not belong to any party or person; it sets the stage for the free nation that would come into being a few years later with the words “We the people…”

Take some time today—every day—to refresh yourself with this magnificent document. Warts and all, it still holds up, and is more important than ever.

Happy Fourth of July, all.