4 Must-Reads From Professors Over Independence Day Weekend
On what it means to be a citizen:
“It was one of the great shocks of my life, and it came early. In fifth-grade government class. Though I can’t remember much else that we learned then, a detail in Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution reached out and grabbed me like the hound of the Baskervilles:
‘No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.’
With that one sentence, the ambition that fires the imagination of every red-blooded American youth was snuffed out. I was not a natural-born citizen. I had not been born on American soil. I could never be president.”
On the pursuit of happiness:
“Jefferson may not have had ‘book or pamphlet’ open in front of him when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he certainly borrowed freely from Locke and Mason, and his phrase ‘the pursuit of Happiness’ admirably streamlined Mason’s ‘pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.’
But what exactly did Jefferson mean?”
On the Battle of the Somme:
“One hundred years ago today, the greatest battle of the First World War began — the Battle of the Somme.
Hope died that day, and the modern age began.”
“The Western Front was a cacophonous mixture of men and material. Airplanes buzzed slowly above the thousands of miles of zigzagged trenches carved into the chalky soil. Motorized lorries stalled, started and then plodded behind the lines, bringing up shells, water, tinned beef, bullets and soldier’s rum, etc., everything needed to sustain the armies astride the Somme.”
