This week’s pomp, sparkle, and pyrotechnics celebrated, among other things, Jefferson’s inspirational sentence: “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.”

The last of these unalienable rights may drive us more than anything else. But it may also be misinterpreted. We have the right to pursue happiness, but that doesn’t make happiness itself a right. We have to go after it. We have to work for it.
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