Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD WOOD

Wo hold those truths to ho self-evident—that all men are created equal} that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—The Declaration of Independence. WHILE. the Declaration of Independence says In effect that it is self-evident all men are created equal, the fact of the equality of men is, has been and always will be denied by those who have rot the analytical ability to understand just what was meant by Jefferson when he wrote these words into the Declaration. AU Americans are equal before the law and as children of liberty they are brothers of a family none of whom has exclusive rights. It Is the equality before the law, equality of opportunity and the equality of liberty that was in the mind of Jefferson.

It Is possible, however, that Jefferson did not think on the matter of equal opportunities for all Americans when he set forth these self-evident truths, but that Americans are created to equal opportunities. Is one of the supreme facts.- .-i ’ Americans are not all native born. The instant that a man of foreign birth comes to this country with the determination to become an American citizen he steps upon a plape of equality with every o*er American, native born or naturalised. But he must become an American In something more than name, and by so doing he becomes an inheritor by right of sonship of all that Was promised by the writer of the Declaration of Independence, by the men who signed it and by the great document Itself. Politics, creed, race, whatever they may be, do not enter Into the question, for Americanism Is a thing apart from all 4 three. What America asks of those who coma to her from other lands is only that which she asks of those who claim her as their country by right of birth. It has been held by some persons that there is not opportunity of equality in the United States. The commonest stories tn our school books of American endeavor prove that opportunity comes to the man who asks It to be his guest and that It does not deny Itself entrance into any home. The future America depends upon its people. They “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." and among these are “Iff* liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Is there any right Id the world more to be desired than that which gives to the man of proper living, liberty and that opportunity for a happiness which is the reward of his own labor?