We complain too much. But then, it’s part of who we are as Americans. It’s in our genetic memory. We are a nation of whiners.

Perhaps that’s why we so cherish the Declaration of Independence, signed this date 232 years ago, as an enumeration of grievances against the dastardly British crown. It is a laundry list of complaints. And in that respect, it’s the all-American document.

Most of the Declaration’s grievances remain well known to most of us, however casual our educations: King George III “imposing taxes on us without our consent” … restricting free trade with other nations … “quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.”

Some objections trend toward the melodramatic: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people.”

As with many complaints, the more we think about them the more exaggerated they become. Dr. Larry Rowland, professor emeritus of the University of South Carolina Beaufort, is fond of this one from the Declaration: “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

Rowland, amused, says the most out-of-the-way and disagreeable place colonial delegates were ever forced to meet was Beaufort, and only once. They found our fair city, well, hot.

So-called enemy combatants now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or “renditioned” in Saudi Arabia might share a grievance or two with the Declaration’s authors: “depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury” … “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

Make no mistake the Declaration of Independence is a great document. In it, our founding fathers effectively said, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more.”

The Declaration was a profound, unprecedented demand for change and, soon enough, a call to arms. Those who signed it and fought for the independence it claimed were unimaginably courageous.

But as foundation documents go, the Constitution is far more important. It’s the load-bearing wall of our free society; it’s the porch light of the greatest experiment in democracy yet devised by humankind.

The Constitution is vague and broad and open to interpretation, painted in shades of gray, yielding up few simple answers. Even its anniversary is hard to pin down (it was ratified by individual states between September 1787 and July 1788) so we don’t celebrate it the way we do the Declaration of Independence.

Otherwise we complain about the Constitution, in the tradition of grievances against King George, picking and choosing selected pet phrases as if it were a buffet of ideals: free speech … trial by jury … “the right to bear arms” … repeal of prohibition.

The government our founding fathers left us is hard. It was meant to be. If it was easy everybody would do it. Maybe that’s why we cleave to the trivial issues: saggy pants, carriage tours, decibel levels, imaginary smoking and drinking boundaries, school uniforms, tinted windows, dog tethering, leaf burning, mini bottles, official state beverages and dances and horses ….

They’re what we whine about.