Reclaiming the Declaration

It's that time of year. Countless editorials, speeches, blog posts, and articles will jibber about how the Declaration proclaimed the founding of a unified nation whose founding principle of universal egalitarianism justified its intervention at home and abroad.

Let's see if we can adjust some attitudes here. We'll consider this document in both the context of its entirety, and in the times in which it was written.

Op-ed writers always begin and end their loving quotation of the Declaration with the second sentence, as if that sentence summarized the entire document. As you'll see, it clearly does not. The first sentence introduces the reader to the import of the entire document, which is that "We just seceeded from England, and we're gonna tell you why." Read it for yourself:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Then comes the famous second sentence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

But hold on! It doesn't stop there. The second sentence leads to the third:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

So a more accurate summary of what we've read so far would go something like this: "Sometimes different peoples have to part ways with each other, and form their own countries. So that the rest of the world will know what's going on, a people should announce why they seceeded. We believe all peoples have God-given rights, and that governments are created to protect those rights. If government fails to do so to the people's satisfaction, then they have the right to change that government, or, if it's a total mess, create a new one. The one right that protects all the others is the right to self-determination, and no one can tell a people how they should be governed but themselves."

Note that "men" and "people" are used interchangeably. If I were to attempt a one-sentence summary of the Declaration, I'd say, "Every people has the right to self-determination, and we just exercised that right." That's why this document was named the "Declaration of Independence" and not the "Universal Declaration of Human Equality." None of the Founders believed in literal equality, nor in democracy, which they knew always leads to chaos.

So "one nation, under God, indivisible" is clearly an anti-American, anti-Founder statement, which was concocted, by the way, by a utopian socialist who detested what the Founders created. The Declaration's often-overlooked conclusion spells out that each former colony was now an independent country:

That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Notice that Jefferson used the pronouns "they" and "them" to describe the 13 new nations, as opposed to referring to one, united nation -- which did not exist until Lincoln's centralizing counter-revolution. Lincoln erased the idea that governments exist to serve the people; from now on, the imperial standard that the people exist to serve the government would be enforced once again -- and if it required the sacrifice of 600,000 people to preserve the existing power structure, then so be it.

Of course, the true meaning of the Declaration, like the meaning of "conservative," is just another of the inheritances our handlers have stolen from us.