The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark

""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Within weeks of their publication in July 1776, those words spread around the world. In August, a London newspaper reprinted the Declaration of Independence in full. Edinburgh followed. Soon after that, it appeared in Madrid, Leiden, Vienna, and Copenhagen. Before long, others drew on the text in more substantial ways."

"Thomas Jefferson himself helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, issued by French revolutionaries in 1789. The Haitian Declaration of Independence, of 1804, drew on both the American and French precedents, calling for the construction of an "empire of liberty in the country which has given us birth." In subsequent decades, declarations of independence were issued by Greece, Liberia (the author had been born in Virginia), and a host of new Latin American nations."

"In 1918, Thomáš Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, signed a Declaration of Common Aims of the Independent Mid-European Nations at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, using the Founders' inkwell. On that occasion, a replica of the Liberty Bell was rung, not because any American president or official had asked for it to ring but because Masaryk had been inspired by the story of the American founding."

The Declaration of Independence's phrase 'all men are created equal' spread worldwide within weeks of its July 1776 publication, prompting reprints across Europe. European and global revolutionaries adapted its language in new founding texts. Jefferson assisted in drafting France's Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and Haiti's 1804 independence drew on both American and French precedents, calling for an 'empire of liberty.' New nation-states in Greece, Liberia, and Latin America issued their own declarations. In 1918 Masaryk signed a Declaration at Independence Hall using the Founders' inkwell and rang a replica Liberty Bell out of inspiration rather than U.S. pressure. American founding documents enshrine human rights, rule of law, and the ideal of separation from colonial rule, which inspired others even when practice lagged. In the twentieth century U.S. policy shifted from modeling democratic ideals to actively promoting them.

Read at The Atlantic