The US at 250: it's yet to meet self-evident aims

A quarter of a millennium ago, the US made a tryst with what its founders saw as destiny. Now it must redeem its promises of 4 July 1776. They remain globally resonant till this day

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The second line of America’s famous Declaration of Independence has been called “the most potent single sentence in American history.” Even if we edit the last bit to ‘written in English,’ it might arguably still be true. The line in question, adopted in Philadelphia by the US Continental Congress on 4 July 1776, runs as follows: “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.” This exposition of human rights is followed by a derivative social contract that outlines the new republic’s democracy: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These went down in history as the words of Thomas Jefferson, a rights-focused lawyer who wrote the document's first draft. Some credit for editing, though, must go to Benjamin Franklin, a scientist who dared fly a kite in a thunderstorm to check if lightning was electricity, as l