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Discussing the war in Vietnam will never be an easy subject.

Unlike World War I that started with the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand, and World War II that started with Germany’s invasion of Poland, the events that led to our war in Vietnam remain a source of controversy. Unraveling these events into a cohesive storyline will likely never happen.

Adding to this problem is a general indifference to history – including our own – and a preference for trite explanations and sound bites that conform to the country’s predominantly patriotic narrative.

Events like July 4 give us an opportunity to put all this aside and to recall what we do know.

First, our founding fathers were extraordinary humans whose thoughts, words, and actions have transcended the ages. We may veer off course, but we have the bedrock of the Declaration of Independence, and its Preamble, to set us right again.

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.

Second, in the heat of fighting communism, much like today’s “war on terror,” the Preamble is considered restricted to Americans only, and not “all men,” as it reads.

Should we take the Declaration of Independence literally, and choose to honor the men who signed it, we are compelled to think of the enemy as equal to our own. It’s not an easy notion to accept, but we must if we are to remain true to the idea of America.

Continue reading July 4th Postmortem: A Declaration of Equality