On this day
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Paul Ryan's July 4 statement (emphasis added):
On this year’s Fourth, we can celebrate the historic document that was signed—and the self-evident truths it declared. We can celebrate the historic battles that were fought so that those truths would embrace all of our people. We can remember the extraordinary men and women, so dedicated to those truths, who died on this day—and the millions of others whose names we’ll never know. Or we can remember—and give thanks—that we live in a country where all these things are possible. We still believe in those self-evident truths. We still struggle to live up to them. And really, what that struggle represents is the pursuit of happiness. So today, with great gratitude, we celebrate our independence.
Could Speaker Ryan (or the intern who wrote this statement) have meant "on this day" to modify "We can remember"? Or are invited to remember the people who died in historic battles specifically on July 4? Puzzling.
Update — Jenny Chu points out that Adams, Jefferson and Monroe died on July 4. I was led away from that interpretation by the previous discussion of "historic battles" and the reference to "extraordinary men and women" who died on that day, as well as the following "millions of others". And now I also wonder what we're meant to understand by "all these things" — the document? the truths? the battles? the deaths? All of them?
Perhaps this message is a lightly-adapted version of an all-purpose patriotic-holiday exhortation.
[h/t Adam Rosenthal]
Jenny Chu said,
July 5, 2016 @ 12:40 am
When I Google "died on July 4":
"Five years to the day after Adams and Jefferson died — on July 4, 1831 — the fifth President, James Monroe, passed away. So three presidents have died on the same date: July 4th. "
No word about any patriotic American women who died on July 4th, though.
Gregory Kusnick said,
July 5, 2016 @ 1:03 am
I thought Memorial Day was the holiday when we remember people who died in historic battles.
But I guess we can still give thanks that we live in a country where it's possible for extraordinary men and women to die on July 4.
Mark P said,
July 5, 2016 @ 8:43 am
It's not clear to me that "millions of others" refers to people who died in wars or in any other form of support for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but if it does, Ryan is at least slightly overestimating the number. According to the Wiki, about 1.3 million Americans have died in all US wars. But, of course, as Gregory K said, Independence Day is not traditionally the day we remember them. MYL, I think your last sentence is right. Ryan's statement sounds like a low-effort attempt to give a statement for the occasion.
[(myl) If "the millions of others" are war casualties, then we need to explain the clause "whose names we'll never know" — surely this can be true only of a very small fraction of U.S. war dead, or for that matter of U.S. citizens deceased for any reason.]
J.W. Brewer said,
July 5, 2016 @ 9:08 am
July 4, 1863 is a significant date in American military (and thus indirectly political etc) history because it marked the successful end of the Union siege of Vicksburg and arguably the successful end of the battle of Gettysburg – after some uncertainty as to whether the sides would reengage in yet another day of combat the Confederates instead elected to begin retreating south. But in both locations there was no actual combat on those days, although I expect it likely that men who had been wounded earlier might have died in as a result of those wounds on that date. Although I doubt wikipedia's list is complete, the most imho notable American woman it says died on that date was Eva Gabor (1919-1995, naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1946), and I'm not prepared to assert she was any less patriotic than James Monroe.
D.O. said,
July 5, 2016 @ 1:12 pm
And really, what that struggle represents is the pursuit of happiness.
What sort of hedonistic society we are? Really. Life, liberty, equality, self government all this is just a pursuit of happiness. *Sheesh*
Francis Boyle said,
July 6, 2016 @ 7:23 am
As one of my philosophy lecturers, an old Berkeley radical, liked to say, the drafters of the Declaration of Independence wanted to write "the pursuit of money" but that was just a little too vulgar for their enlightenment sensibilities, so "pursuit of happiness it became". I expect President Trump might want to make an emendation.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 6, 2016 @ 10:22 am
I expect Francis Boyle's Berkeley instructor may not have been deeply grounded in the pre-Enlightenment aspects of 18th-century political discourse (which like the political discourse of most periods was a mish-mosh of different ideas coming from different places that were probably not fully reconcilable in a single philosophically rigorous schema). One need not think of "happiness" in its 1776 context in a vulgar Benthamite/materialist sense, but can understand it as a plausible gloss of the venerable Aristotelian notion of εὐδαιμονία, which seems to be commonly rendered "human flourishing" in recent English-language academic discourse. And in the Berkeley-and-similar-post-hippie-college-towns variety of English, the injunction "pursue happiness" might perhaps be coherently glossed as "follow your bliss"?
Francis Boyle said,
July 6, 2016 @ 11:29 am
You may disagree with his cynicism but you'd be wrong to attribute it to a lack of the understanding of the subject. His knowledge of the history of philosophy was both "deeply-grounded" and broadly applied. His cynicism was, at least, well earned. One correction, though. I probably should have written "Enlightenment aspirations" as his point, as I understand it, was about the disjunct between political language and material motivations. (Yes, he was an ex-Marxist – what would you expect of an old Berkeley radical in the 80s.)
J.W. Brewer said,
July 6, 2016 @ 11:48 am
You can compare the more famous quote from the document adopted in Philadelphia in 1776 to the language making largely the same point in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted the previous month by I guess the people not important enough to have been sent up to Philadelphia as delegates: "all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." So there was no general taboo against using the word "property" in that kind of context. Whether the omission of that specific word from the Philadelphia document is meaningful rather than contingent/arbitrary/stylistic is certainly not clear to me, although much ink has been spilled on that question over the years. I do think the Philadelphia phrasing is perhaps more susceptible of a broader range of interpretive understandings because not quite so explicitly Lockean, which might be a bug or might be a feature.
Francis Boyle said,
July 6, 2016 @ 2:08 pm
Well, it makes sense that the people who were indeed important enough to be sent to draft the founding document of a nation might be more disposed to idealistic or high sounding language and wary of the concrete for fear of alienating their supporters. And while I don't really have a horse in this race not being a US citizen, I can't help thinking anything "not quite so explicitly Lockean" is indeed a feature.
maidhc said,
July 7, 2016 @ 11:22 pm
Even in that high-sounding document itself, if you bother to read past the first few sentences, there are a few caveats:
Does not apply to bloodthirsty savages, as we plan to force them out and steal their land.
Does not apply to French-speaking Catholics, as we plan to force them out and steal their land.
Bloix said,
July 9, 2016 @ 6:31 pm
Francis Boyle: Your professor was both a cynic and an ignoramus – a common combination. I will not bother to give you the history of the phrase. You can research that yourself if you care to. But I will give you its exposition by the Declaration's greatest champion, Abraham Lincoln:
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal-equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, on the Dred Scott decision
http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/courses/aas-hius366a/lincoln.html
Paul Mulshine said,
July 10, 2016 @ 9:31 am
Fred Thompson made a similar error in the 2008 campaign when he praised those who fought in the "battle" of Valley Forge, which was of course not a battleground but a campground. Members of Congress always seem to like glorying in battle, even when there wasn't one.