Citizens, Not Subjects

During my travels last week, I bookmarked a short article about a recent discovery made by the Library of Congress' Preservation Research and Test Division. (I didn't know the LoC had any such division, but I digress). Through the use of high resolution cameras and spectral analysis, the LoC discovered a key editorial change in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence (emphasis mine):

Jefferson originally had written the phrase "our fellow subjects." But he apparently changed his mind. Heavily scrawled over the word "subjects" was an alternative, the word "citizens."

The correction seems to illuminate an important moment for Jefferson and for a nation on the eve of breaking from monarchical rule: a moment when he reconsidered his choice of words and articulated the recognition that the people of the fledgling United States of America were no longer subjects of any nation, but citizens of an emerging democracy.

The correction occurs in the portion of the declaration that deals with U.S. grievances against King George III, in particular, his incitement of "treasonable insurrections." While the specific sentence doesn’t make it into the final draft, a similar phrase was retained, and the word "citizens" is used elsewhere in the final document. The sentence didn’t carry over, but the idea did.

Check out these images from the BoingBoing article on the LoC press release:



For those of us who have the blessing of birthright, and for those who have been legally naturalized, we would do well to remember that indeed, we are citizens - not subjects. We are subject to no king but the One in Heaven. Our political class would also do well to engage in some remedial education on this point, since they seem to have forgotten this reality in their push to govern what private businesses pay their employees and to conduct political background checks against citizens seeking information through the Freedom of Information Act - among so many other small, but significant intrusions by what is increasingly looking like the formation of a "ruling class."

A reclamation of the mantle of citizenship (and its rights and duties, thereof) by the general population may be the last hope to shore up an increasingly shaky system of checks and balances.

(h/t: Sense of Events)