“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.” This is the most famous sentence from the American Declaration of Independence.
Written in 1776, the words rang across the globe. They gave oppressed peoples in many lands permission to believe they could escape genocide, pogroms, corrupt police and courts, religious and political discrimination, grinding poverty and lack of education and opportunity; that somewhere there was a land that asked you only to be healthy and honest. After that it was up to you. But you knew that America valued life, valued freedom and gave you a chance to make a happy life.
Indeed, America wrote on its Statue of Liberty, located on an island off Manhattan, these words from The New Colossus, by the American poet, Emma Lazarus.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In Donald Trump’s America today those words and the soaring hope of the Declaration of Independence sound hollow and hypocritical. Sixty years on from the Civil Rights movement and the murder of Martin Luther King the status of black Americans has been diminished by Trump’s assault on anti-discrimination programmes and law.
If you’re not 100% sexually straight (whatever that might mean) your sexuality may come to mean that the golden door is not open for you. If you don’t have the right papers, no matter how long you’ve lived peacefully in America, you may get the dawn knock and within hours be in another country, all you had lost, perhaps even your closest family.
And look across the globe. In Ukraine men and women are dying in defence of their country. In Palestine tens of thousands lie dead, their cities destroyed. Jews around the world walk in fear because of rising antisemitism and the behaviour of an Israeli government for which millions of Jews have nothing but loathing.
War also rages in Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In Afghanistan the lives of women are being reduced to that of sexual and domestic slavery, with the prospect of death for those who don’t comply. In China Uyghurs are enslaved.
“Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,” wrote Robert Burns. Today, on the anniversary of his birth, on 25th January 1759, we look to Scotland’s greatest poet for some light and compassion in the world. We find it in his famous work, A man’s a man for a’ that.
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that,
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind,
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.A Prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that!
But an honest man’s aboon his might –
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities, an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ Sense an’ pride o’ Worth
Are higher rank than a’ that.Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth
Shall bear the gree an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s comin yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man the warld o’er
Shall brithers be for a’ that.
Read this Donald Trump. Thus speaks Scotland. Thus hopes the world. Happy birthday Rab.
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