(Sept. 7) As we approach next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should better understand, be grateful for, and celebrate “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”
Referring to the Declaration’s famous second sentence, that is the title of a small book by Louisianan Walter Isaacson, due to be released in November but which can be preordered online. Isaacson, the former Time editor and CEO of CNN who has written highly regarded biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin and Elon Musk, among others, has now produced this eminently readable tract about the principles that define the United States.
In doing so in just 67 spare pages including appendices, Isaacson hopes to reinspire Americans to acknowledge and take pride in “common rights, common grounds, common truths, and common aspirations. Democracy depends on this.”
For the 35-word sentence that so mellifluously proclaims that all men are created equal with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Isaacson parses each locution to give full effect to its significance. The opening “we,” for example, receives two full pages of discussion of “social contract theory” — something seemingly bred in the very bones of those of us over, say, age 60, but which seems largely unfamiliar to plenty of people under, say, 40.
Likewise, the phrase “created equal” gets the necessary explanation that the equality refers not to talents or wealth or success but instead applies “in terms of the political and social rights that arose” from that social contract.
