The Declaration, the Vine and Fig Tree, and 250 Years of American Independence

At the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, our nation has embraced this august anniversary. From sea to shining sea, special events have filled our calendars and occupied our attention.

Artists, musicians, historians, creators of all sorts have brought forth new USA-themed commemorative works. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has produced another masterpiece for this occasion. Newspapers, magazines, all sorts of media have contributed writings and video on all kinds of angles about the actions and events leading up to the Fourth of July, 1776. It’s exciting and reminds us of our shared history.

Those of us old enough to remember the Bicentennial in 1976 realize that, although the nation was celebrating that grand occasion and there was abundant good cheer and patriotism, not everything was hunky dory. Stagflation, gasoline shortages, the Cold War with the Soviet Union, political discord in that election year, and more. We recognize all that now. Back then, youngsters often missed the strife, focusing on the fireworks and festivities before our eyes.

The Declaration

And what’s the object of these landmark celebrations, then and now? The Declaration of Independence.

The British government had hardened its grip on its North American colonies following the French and Indian War. By the mid-1770s, the Mother Country was more like Cinderella’s stepmother. The British sent military troops to occupy and enforce the Crown’s harsh orders. Americans died at their hands in the Boston Massacre and at Lexington and Concord. Americans, who were subject to and supposedly beneficiaries of the British constitution, suffered the violation of their rights—rights under English law and inalienable rights.

The British escalation of its strong-arm tactics, disrespect toward these American British citizens, its government imposing taxes and other coercive policies on colonies and colonials without the consent of the governed, All this led to July 4 and the Declaration of Independence.

The Continental Congress that June adopted Virginia Delegate Richard Henry Lee’s resolution to sever ties with Great Britain. A committee was formed to draw up a document declaring the American colonies’ independence. Its several members asked Thomas Jefferson to write the first draft. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin offered a few edits, and the committee presented the document to the Congress on June 28 (the very same day Continental troops prevailed against the attempted British invasion off South Carolina’s coast at Charles Town, now known as Carolina Day). Congress took it up July 1. By July 4, all the colonies’ delegates had concurred, and the president of Congress, John Hancock, signed the Declaration. The remainder of sworn signers penned their names to the Declaration on August 2.

That revered document begins:

    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.

          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—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

This was followed by 27 specific charges of Britain’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” against the American colonies, along with two paragraphs recounting measures the Americans had taken in seeking redress, concluding with a paragraph in which American independence is declared.

We, . . . appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . . , with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

With this document, the Continental Congress asserted independence and self-government. Those brave Americans had to fight a war against their overlord to secure liberty. And by God’s grace, they did. We have a nation formed by fallen men.

The Vine and Fig Tree

The biblically literate Founding generation put their hand to the sword and their trust in Almighty God. And what was their objective?

The Old Testament book of Micah describes the establishment of just government: God’s kingdom, where the author of justice and righteousness shall bring peace among the nations. Such perfect peace will lead nations to “beat their swords into plowshares,” “their spears into pruning hooks.” War will be no more. And then, “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.”

This metaphor appears in many of the Founders’ writings, both public and private. It was a favorite of George Washington’s. This scriptural passage, discussed in chapter 9 of my book To Invent Is Divine, highlights and intertwines several crucial elements in the context of economic endeavor, human ownership, and shalom. It’s the scene of someone resting after laboring to improve the property that is his farm. There is a vine and a fig tree, each bearing fruit from the owner’s labors. To ask who owns the vine, tree, and their fruit is entirely unnecessary.

And then there’s the security amidst this situation. Here we have private property rights, inherent ownership of the fruits one’s labor produces, and the absence of fear and threat, including clear title. Contrast this peaceful scene with the insecurity, abuse, usurpation, and danger the Continental Congress cites in the Declaration that the colonials had faced for years from an increasingly unbearable sovereign. The vine and fig tree passage, where inherent ownership rights to one’s property and to the fruits of one’s labor are secure, represent the temporal results the Founders sought to deliver to the Americans in the former colonies and to their posterity.

Chapters 12 and 14 of To Invent Is Divine return to the biblical basis for private ownership of property, discussing the Declaration of Independence in the context of biblically founded property rights. The phrase from the Declaration, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” is the authority the Declaration Congress invokes for its otherwise treasonous action. Gary Amos, in his book Defending the Declaration, cites John Locke, with whom Jefferson and most Founders would have been familiar, as the source of this language enshrined in the Declaration. Amos says Locke frequently employed “law of nature,” regarding what God has generally revealed. This is what the Bible calls the law written on humans’ hearts. Locke used “law of God” in reference to God’s moral law. Moreover, Locke combined these two types of law in a single phrase. If the Continentals were to succeed in securing independence and the flourishing vine and fig tree of unthreatened rest and peace, only “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and those laws’ Author would bring them about.

250 Years and Counting

July 4, 2026, marks 250 years for the American republic. Over those two and a half centuries, the United States of America has weathered wars, natural disasters, economic depressions, internal discord, and political unrest. America has also enjoyed unity, prosperity, and dynamic competition driven by innovation and a free enterprise economy. As I say in To Invent Is Divine, chapter 12, “Property rights, coupled with ordered liberty, the rule of law, and limited government, provide a stimulative environment for thriving like a greenhouse for growing plants.”

Our Founding visionaries weren’t demigods, they were flesh-and-blood humans. Those chosen in their respective colonies as delegates to the Continental Congress came together, each with strengths and weaknesses, vices and virtues, his own point of view, personality, attitudes, and opinions. Some were likable, others not so much. They held in common many things, notably a solemn duty to represent the colony that elected them to advance the best interests of the 13 colonies insofar as it didn’t run counter to each one’s individual colony’s interests.

Like us, every American of every generation has vices and virtues, common human weaknesses, and a perspective shaped by their times. Each generation seems to go through both division and unity, both prosperity and challenge. And we are e pluribus unum, one people out of many. Each of us has a civic and moral duty to try to make this republic function. We owe these United States our loyalty, our affection, our devotion over other nations and over selfish interests.

Today, as in 1976, we celebrate America’s birthday as a struggling, divided nation. Democrats battle between constructive moderates of the Bill Clinton strain and socialists of the radical extremist Mandami-Squad wing, while Republicans duke it out between Reaganite conservatives and populists whose ideology embraces the activist, interventionist government of the Progressive Era. Congress is practically evenly divided. Recent presidential elections resemble a ping-pong game, sending one party’s chief executive to the White House and then the other party’s diametrically opposite candidate.

I’m contemplating two recent Wall Street Journal columns, one by moderate Democrat William Galston, the other by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan. Both speak to these times and to the themes addressed above. I close with their words as food for thought for my fellow Americans to ponder this Fourth of July.

Galston writes:

At its best, conservatism . . . identifies the aspects of a tradition that are enduringly good and seeks to conserve them. In the U.S., this means dedication to the principles of the Declaration and the rule of law embodied in the Constitution. In this sense, we should all be conservatives.

. . .

At its best, liberalism in America focuses attention on the gap between principles and practices and mobilizes public support to close these gaps. In this sense, we should all be liberals.

. . .

I hope we will reject the extremes of both the left and the right. Neither a nation defined by its past sins nor one defined by ancestral lineage can replace an America dedicated to the principles of the Declaration.

Noonan writes:

. . . America’s wide-openness . . . is unique to us, a tradition and a thing of lore.

. . .

You can think, within two seconds, of stories of nobodies who became somebodies [in America].

. . .

. . . I continue to think about the political challenges to our traditional ideas of economic freedom that will be coming the next few years.

. . .

. . . [T]he answer isn’t socialism, the old idea that is rising again.

. . .

American free-market capitalism generates—it allows things to be brought to life. Socialism merely distributes what is. And in the end it always relies on lies, the first of which is always that it works.

Happy Independence Day, y’all!