But, it had, actually. What the Declaration of Independence declared on that July Fourth, 241 years ago, was a statement born out of self-rule to a very large degree. Here, in the colonies, the Americans had discovered, not that they wanted to be free men, but that they were, indeed born free*, and in that understanding, they stood to declare that no one owned them.
*not so much slaves and women, or natives, just the slave owning native killing white man.
Yes, baah, it was less than perfect, but the ideas of declaration, are none the less powerful. And at that time, even more than the men who wrote it had dared to dream for themselves.