Only Americans have the humility to call the United States an Imperfect Union. Only Americans have the audacity to promise themselves a More Perfect Union. We don't even care if "More Perfect" makes grammatical sense. But then we are Americans. Grammatical sense be damned.
Grammatical sense be damned? Not so fast.
In 1776 Americans had actually kicked off the greatest grammar debate in the history of the English-speaking world. To make the long story short, some of the American founders argued for "inalienable rights" regarding the early versions of the Declaration of Independence. When it came to the final version, though, they conceded to the majority who voted for "unalienable rights." Interestingly, modern American dictionaries prefer "inalienable" as a proper adjective.
Unalienable rights, however, have long been declared enough but not exercised enough. Consequently or consequentially, our history shows a gnawing gap between rights declared and rights exercised. With that being said, this gnawing gap keeps narrowing. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
Can we imagine a world without America? Can we imagine an America without unalienable rights enshrined in its Declaration of Independence?
Author: renqiulan
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