h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So here we are on 5 July. I had a great time out at the farm, swimming, relaxing, playing with cats, eating home-made ice cream, the usual stuff you do on 4 July. After all that, I slept like a rock...only to wake up and find that our civilisation is in more trouble than we thought, folks. After yesterday's Independence Day flaps, we now have evidence that 18th-century people were smarter than the denizens of the 21st.

First, there was the trending #IndependanceDay. Which provoked the suggestion that Twitterers stop using Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos as a spelling teacher.

Then, National Public Radio decided to update a very old tradition in this country. For ages, people gathered in public places and picnic grounds on this date, and listened while someone read the Declaration of Independence aloud. After all, that document is why the 4th of July is a holiday. You're supposed to recognise at least the first few sentences - they're as epic as the 'Tears in Rain' speech. NPR's twist was to tweet the whole document at 140 characters or less per tweet.

It all went south very quickly. Here are some of the reply tweets, offered without comment:

'Please stop. This is not the right place.'

'So, NPR is calling for revolution, interesting way to condone the violence whle trying to sound 'patriotic'. Your implications are clear.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about...'

'This is why you're going to get defunded.'

'Are you drunk? Your silly tweets make your state of mind questionable.'

And the pithy but eloquent:

'Horsechit.'

Of course, today many people on Twitter are making mock of those who mistook the Declaration of Independence for anti-Trump propaganda...

One tweet, the piece de resistance, has a double-edge irony:

'NPR's tweets expose a thin grasp of American history.'

While we may feel that these tweeters showed a poor grasp of history, perhaps NPR did, too. Apparently, back in the 1950s, an experimental individual circulated a 'petition' containing the ideas of the Declaration, plus some items from the Bill of Rights. Only one of the hundred or so people he asked was willing to sign it (or recognised it), and that man was a Mayflower descendant who knew his history. One women told him huffily that those things couldn't be in the *American* Declaration of Independence - it sounded more like the *communist* one to her....

is all I have to say. In defence of the tweeters: history is a boring subject, right? Besides, it *is* true that the bulk of the Declaration of Independence is a list of complaints about a tyrant who was threatening the common weal. And, as the Fourth Doctor was once heard to remark, 'Megalomanics are all alike.' So it could be an honest mistake...

.It's difficult from so far away to gauge how seriously Americans feel about the DoI. Do you all get teary-eyed and clutch your heart as you hear it being read aloud? Is it like hearing Star Spangled Banner before the Superbowl? (which is as close I get to the American inner sanctum) I get the impression there's little in the Declaration which wasn't in the Magna Carta, when you boil it down.

Good point. They were, after all, merely asserting their rights as Englishmen, as they saw it. They only made the break when king and parliament ignored their previous petitions for redress.

For a very long time, though, the Declaration was regarded as a sacred document. While few got teary-eyed about it, they nonetheless viewed it with reverence, the main 'new' idea being that it enshrined the ideas of John Locke into legislation. Locke had helped write Lord Shaftesbury's contentious constitution for the Carolinas.

The ideas that are Lockean are 'all men are created equal', and the idea of 'consent of the governed', which were considered pretty radical at the time.

The DoI was a document with far-reaching consequences: it was used as a model for France's Declaration of the Rights of Man, as well as the Vietnamese declaration of 1945. Jefferson and Paine helped the French write theirs. Of course, the British wanted to arrest Paine, who was born in Thetford, Norfolk.

At least, that's the version we put into the history courses they obviously pay no attention to...

twitter/facebook and all the others = bin 'em they're all beneath my dignity to go on them

I've spent *my* last 7 Independence Days in an 8'x16'x8' plywood box, surrounded by cardboard-encased black powder (and assorted minerals)

Hunting, or re-enacting?

Neither... Selling fireworks. Either of those others would be a lot more fun...

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