SACRAMENTO — Could the Declaration of Independence be signed today by this crop of political leaders, particularly the one who occupies and defaces the White House?
Not just sign, but sincerely mean it.
Especially the guy who bangs a wrecking ball against the historic East Wing to make room for an incongruous ballroom monstrosity, who mars the sacred Oval Office with gold glitter and paves over the lovely Rose Garden.
But never mind these displays of egotism and tackiness that currently blemish landmarks throughout the nation’s capital, including the National Mall, traditional site of the annual July Fourth fireworks.
Back to my central question: Would there be enough patriots today to affix their John Hancocks to a rebellious document that bravely concludes:
“For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Political leaders would very likely sign the more famous preamble that includes this passage, widely regarded as the most important sentence in American history:
“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.”
Those words probably would poll well and make salable talking points in local town halls. Even if the notion that all people are created equal would be recognized, as it was 250 years ago, as merely a lofty, hypocritical pie-in-the-sky goal. After all, the eloquent document’s principal author, Thomas Jefferson, owned 600 slaves.
We’ve made a world of progress since then on equality. But clearly President Trump and much of America today don’t agree that all people are created equal and guaranteed the same right, for example, of due process in court. People such as undocumented immigrants — the tired, the poor and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
But that’s a heated and politicized 250-year-old debate that will continue indefinitely.
For me, the most striking and sincere sentence in the Declaration of Independence is the last one, in which 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, unanimously pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”
“It was not a throwaway line,” notes UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar. “It was an acknowledgment that they were committing treason. It showed how deeply committed they were.”
The nation’s founders understood that in British King George III’s view, they were traitors. And if their rebellion failed, they’d be targets for execution.
“We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” Benjamin Franklin supposedly told delegates.
In fact, nine of the signers died during the Revolutionary War from disease, prison hardships or combat wounds.
An estimated 6,800 U.S. soldiers died in combat and more than 8,500 were wounded. An additional 17,000 Americans perished.
Several signers sacrificed their fortunes, some to help pay for the war.
Gen. George Washington — an immensely rich Virginia planter — refused to accept a salary as commander in chief of the Continental Army. He bought much of the ammunition and fighting gear himself, then was reimbursed after the war.
Sacred honor? That meant what it said back then. The revolutionary leaders proved their character with sacrifice and bravery.
The nation’s first president, Washington, could not tell a lie, according to myth. Of course, he routinely lied during the war to deceive the British. But our 47th president, Donald Trump, is a pathological liar who seems to prevaricate daily.
Would Trump pledge his fortune to the cause of liberty?
That’s hard to imagine of a president who uses the office to promote and prosper from his own brand name. And whose income ballooned to $2.2 billion in 2025, his first year back in the White House after being booted by voters in 2020, a humiliation he still doesn’t have the integrity to acknowledge.
“President Trump is using the office to enrich himself and his family in ways we’ve never seen before,” Chemerinsky asserts.
Pledge his life? Please!
This is a man who once faked bone spurs to avoid the military draft. OK, he wasn’t the only young fellow who dodged combat in the unnecessary Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans.
But Trump has called America’s war dead “suckers” and “losers,” according to former aides. He denies it.
There’s no question he expressed contempt for the late Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years as a North Vietnamese prisoner. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
The Declaration of Independence was about severing the chains of a British monarchy and creating a government powered by the people with checks and balances.
Trump has attempted — often successfully — to govern as a monarch, ignoring the checks and balances of Congress and the judiciary. He has gotten away with it because bullied Republican congressional leaders have mostly rolled over like lapdogs.
But we may be seeing the early signs of a mild revolt against the king as Trump sinks further in the polls and we draw closer to the November elections.
That’s sort of what the founders had in mind: a government deriving its power “from the consent of the governed.” And when citizens are subjected to “absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
So could the Declaration be signed today? Hard to say. There’s no King George hovering over us. Only a wannabe king.
But, yes, I suspect there’d be a signing. Independence is a dominant gene in America’s DNA.
What else you should be reading
The must-read: What you should know about the $351.7-billion state budget Newsom just signed
Go your own way: Facing setbacks and resistance, Trump presses bid to reshape elections on multiple fronts
The L.A. Times Special: More money and patience could help California’s vote count
Until next week,
George Skelton
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