Los Angeles Times

Commentary: Parsing the 'pursuit of happiness'

The beauty of all self-evident truths is that, by definition, we do not need to explain why they are true. Our annual celebrations of American independence fit neatly into this mental zone of confident presumptions. To the extent that we think about it at all, the Fourth of July is the time for summer vacation schedules to start, fireworks to appear at dusk and patriotic rhetoric to evaporate amid the airbursts.

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