What Does the Declaration Mean by Pursuit of Happiness?

I wrote this short essay about the “pursuit of happiness” for the editorial page of the StarTribune newspaper, where it was published on July 3. _____ Opinion | What did the founders mean by the pursuit of happiness? The authors of our founding document were deadly serious about a goal we might see as whimsical. By Timothy Taylor When the five-person committee that drafted the U.S. Declaration of Independence declared it to be “self-evident” that there was a right to “the pursuit of Happiness,” what manner of happiness did they have in mind? In a declaration explaining why the signers felt compelled to commit treason against their existing government and to prevent “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny,” it seems unlikely that they were foreshadowing the whistling cheeriness of the 1988 Bobby McFerrin hit, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” When you are announcing that you “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” for the purpose of fighting a…