Dr. Martin Luther King declared personal liberties as key to personal sovereignty and prosperity by saying:

“When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…..So we’ve come to cash this check; a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning. ‘My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.”

Americans are individuals whose primary identity resides in pre-existing, natural, intangible liberties and only secondarily in ethnicity, gender, or race. Dr. King asserted the philosophical doctrines engrossed at founding placed all on the same metaphysical plain, made liberty the pathway to spiritual and material prosperity, and made us all brothers and sisters.

Nolan Nelson

Redmond

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