An America that constantly fights is an America that does not fulfill our mutual pledge for the American Dream.
While that turndown represented a clear defeat for the United States, there were other things that President Ford and his aides got at Rambouillet„ particularly the mutual pledge to get some positive movement in the stalled world trade negotiations and acquiescence in not making the final communique too extensive or too specific.
Therein the "United Colonies'' were declared to be "Free and Independent States''; but, even then, the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another, or of the Union; but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge, and their mutual action, before, at the time, and afterwards, abundantly show.
There will be no mutual "pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor".
They would surely smile on the courage, leadership and vibrancy of revisiting the mutual pledge to who we are in this democracy.
The "mutual pledge to each other" of the Declaration of Independence becomes more deeply valued, even sacred, when we expand our understanding of who among us is fully included in the American promise.
There is no sign that China and Russia plan to enter a genuine alliance, with mutual pledges of aid in time of war, say Chinese and Western scholars and diplomats.
A dispute between Britain and France has prompted President Jacques Chirac to back out of a traditional year-end meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair amid mutual pledges to assert national goals even at the risk of deepening division.
The fulfilment of these mutual pledges is now on the agenda.
It does not matter what sort of "alien" you are called, you are effectively labeled separate, different and not "one of us". The mutual pledging of our lives, fortune and honor to one another is how the signers of the Declaration of Independence concluded their vision of who we would become as a new independent nation.
