This Saturday is the Fourth of July, the nation’s birthday, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
As we all know, among the more famous concepts of the Declaration is the line: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Much has been written about this sentence and much has been said about the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or Pursuit of Happyness if you’re Will Smith).
But, if you look closely, the Declaration doesn’t just stop there. It says that these 3 rights are “among” the unalienable rights that we have. This means we have more rights. What are those? No one tells you that in school.
After much research, I have managed to unearth the answer. Here then are your unalienable rights:
1. Life
2. Liberty
3. Pursuit of Happiness
4. Free wi-fi
5. Access to a quality pizza joint
6. A reasonably clean bathroom at Starbuck’s
7. Funny Super Bowl Commercials
8. At least one teacher between first and 12th grade who gives a shit.
9. Voting power
10. Clean drinking water
And, finally, of course, there is the most American right of all – the right to be royally pissed off about the rich getting richer, while the rest of us are getting screwed.
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