This Independence Day, I’ve been thinking about freedom and democracy, of course. But I’ve also been thinking about language, and about the act of thinking itself.
My friend Tina started it. That poor hostage to bureaucracy has been through more visioning sessions than any human should have to endure.
Which led her recently to ask me a funny, rhetorical question: How did the Founding Fathers set up this country’s framework without a mission statement, strategic goals, or a single MBA between them?
I laughed, then I thought, she’s right.
How did they drill down to those unalienable rights while maintaining targeted efficiencies?
How did they calibrate the brand to incentivize end users’ empowerment? What were their metrics? Who was their target?
The big three founding documents – The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – are still powerful today because of their ideas, not their jargon.
They’re the products of study and reflection, of argument and debate. But most importantly, they’re the products of thought.
It took Thomas Jefferson more than two weeks to write the Declaration of Independence, an elegant document that not only still makes sense 233 years later, it can give you chills. He wrote:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
And then he did, laying out colonists’ grievances against old King George III in simple, declarative sentences: He has refused … He has forbidden … He has dissolved … He has obstructed … He has plundered …
And when the founders presented the document to the colonists, they didn’t hire consultants. They didn’t take a poll or target the message. Those Colonial Empty Nesters, the Fast Track Families, the Young Influentials all received the same Declaration – the one we celebrate today.
And today, every market segment is blurred into one big American mass, eating hamburgers, planting lawn chairs along parade routes and celebrating those founding principles.
We hold these truths to be self-evident – it’s not the visioning that matters.
It’s the vision.
