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.
Actually, our founding fathers had quite a debate over grammar. Some of them argued for "inalienable rights" in the early versions of our Declaration of Independence. They conceded to the majority who voted for "unalienable rights" in its final version. Interestingly, our modern dictionaries prefer "inalienable" as a proper adjective.
Inalienable or unalienable rights, however, have long been declared enough but not exercised enough. Accordingly, our American history shows a gnawing gap between rights declared and rights exercised. More importantly, this gnawing gap is narrowing. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
Happy Father's Day!
Author: renqiulan
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