HAPPY PLACE Other nations are founded on battle, blood, territory, nationality, culture, and language. Not America... We’re founded on happiness.
as anyone knows who’s spent a holiday dragging whiney children on a tour of UN headquarters. The New Testament, arguably the founding text of Western Civilization, cites happiness just seven times and never in a happy way. Peter’s First Epistle to persecuted Christians in Asia Minor says, “If ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye.” Jesus is quoted as using the word “happy” only once, on the occasion of washing his disciples’ feet. We admire the Son of Man, but we sons of a gun who populate America do not pursue happiness in this manner. The United States is the first – and so far, only – among happy nations. “Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books,” wrote Thomas Carlyle. Just ask Americans a question about American history, watch them draw a blank, and you’ll see that we are the happy people indeed. Not that Americans seem happy at the moment. We are in a very fussy mood. But we’ve been through that before – when Fort Sumter got shelled, when the stock market crashed in 1929, when Coca-Cola introduced New Coke. Happiness itself isn’t the point. “Happy” is often used as a none-too- complimentary modifier: “happy go lucky,” “slap happy,” “happy horseshit, “happy as a pig in same.” The catch phrases “One big happy family,” “Is everybody happy?” and
It’s right there in America’s IPO, in the first sentence of the main body of the Declaration of Independence: “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.” compacts, treaties, and bodies of law – written and unwritten, ancient and modern – and not find the word “happiness.” No talk of happiness appears in England’s Magna Carta. The French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen fails to address the subject. The European Union’s proposed constitution never mentions happiness, although, at 485 pages, it mentions practically everything else, including regulatory specifications for “edible meat offal” and “lard and other rendered pig fat.” When the EU constitution was rejected by French voters ( “Sacré bleu! Vous ne pas tell us how to make ze lard!” ), it was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon that also makes no reference to happiness (or even edible meat offal). The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights does state, in Article 24, that, “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including... periodic holidays with pay.” But a holiday is not the same as happiness, We can search the rest of the world’s proclamations, covenants, protocols,
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July 2019
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