Political Correctness and Editing Historic Documents

Does the code of your professional organization require you to change the wording on historic documents? How about the foundational document of our country? Does the code of your professional organization supersede that?

Samuel Adams Beer manufacturers are claiming that it does.

Their 4th of July commercial traded on the fact that their brand of beer carries the name Samuel Adams. Samuel Adams was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The actor in the commercial is shown drawing a brewski while he recites a version of these words from the Declaration:

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 Samuel Adams version goes like this:

… all men are created equal. They are endowed with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Aside from the overall cheesiness of conflating a beer with the Declaration of Independence, quite a few people are upset by the editing of the words themselves. Personally, I think that if you’re going to quote a document of the importance of the Declaration of Independence, you should quote it. This is a paraphrase of sorts, pretending to be a quote. However that is a minor quibble.

The reason the ad has drawn fire, so much fire that the beer manufacturers had to issue their flabby little explanation about how they were following their beer manufacturer’s guidelines, is what the paraphrase left out altogether.

If you compare the quote from the actual Declaration of Independence with the paraphrase used in the ad, it’s easy to spot. They left out the phrase “endowed by their Creator.”

There was a time when people would have shrugged this off. But in today’s world of politically correct censorship and overt bullying against people of religious faith, it struck a nerve, and it should have.

I am not a beer drinker. I can not stand the taste of the stuff. So it’s easy for me to say this. But, there are plenty of other brands of beer you can buy, some of them which may not be such slaves to the guidelines of their association. (Which, I would guess were voted on by the manufacturer members of the association.)