When I was in Australia the other month, I was involved in a roundtable discussion about human rights with a number of students and one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. The students were debating whether it was modern imperialism for western countries to “impose” their standards on other countries. Should we, for example, decry certain aspects of Sharia law? What about female genital mutilation?

Happily, most of the students arrived at the view that certain rights transcended culture and nationality. Before the moderator could end the session, I said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

The human rights lawyer, not American, came up to me afterwards and asked, “That was a wonderful line. What’s it from?”

Today’s the day to read it. There’s a lot of American cultural imperialism in today’s world, but this is one American document that everyone should know.