Does the Declaration of Independence Tell the Truth? (How are these truths "self-evident" ?)

At this time of the year, while most U.S. citizens are contemplating U.S. independence and the Declaration of Independence, I ask myself why, in 19 years of teaching in the New York Public Schools, I have not once heard the students gathered to sing in any assembly or forum "America the Beautiful," " God Bless America," or "My Country ‘Tis of Thee?" The National Anthem has only been sung once a year at the graduation ceremonies.

This serious omission of patriotic fervor can be attributed to the leftist influence on the school system. Most leftists believe the Declaration of Independence was primarily a document driven by the class interests of the signers. The gentry and economically powerful merchant groups in the U.S. and the aristocratic southern plantation economy joined forces against powerful interests in the mother country that would limit their growth, their economic well-being, and their power. Talk about inalienable rights, equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were rationalizations for underlying issues of class and status. Charles and Mary Beard had set the stage for this analysis, and it has been carried forward by Howard Zinn's Peoples' History of the United States. Are they correct?

First, a caveat: even if the document were a justification of class interests in part, would that be so wrong? If we have an economic leadership based on wealth amassed through faith, hard work, determination, and intelligence, then is it not just for them to defend that wealth and influence from usurpations by those who would unlawfully take said wealth and influence away from them? The truth of "no taxation without representation" is a valid truth, but it certainly oversimplifies the dynamics behind the Declaration of Independence.

John Locke in his treatises on government made a cogent analysis of the body politic, and stressed that life, liberty and property could best be protected if the locus of power in the government lay with the representatives of the people rather than with the executive -- in his context: the monarchy. The signers of the Declaration, aware of the moral ambiguities of slavery in the American context, deleted the word "property" and preferred to substitute "pursuit of happiness." They introduced this Aristotelian goal in order (1) to acknowledge the existence of a summum bonum, (2) to point to the unity of happiness and virtue (happiness for Aristotle was arrived at by strenuous contemplation and implementation of virtue, and was not, as in our times, associated with hedonism or with "self-fulfillment" a la Abraham Maslow), and (3) to introduce the idea of the newly independent USA as a land of opportunity, both economically and politically. How can this be offensive?

Although the Declaration was not in one accord with the 17^th century Westminster Shorter Catechism that announced the purpose of life to be "to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever," by insisting that the values expressed were "endowed by their Creator" we can see that the Declaration is an echo of the earlier Westminster document. The language suggests to me that the Declaration was deeply rooted in Protestant theology more than in class interests.

What about the self-evidence of the truths claimed in our founding document? This assertion is directly out of the rationalist enlightenment playbook. R. Descartes had affirmed that he could only believe truths that were "clear and distinct." To be clear and distinct they had to meet the challenge of his method of doubt. If there were any possibility that the truths he perceived could be contingent or could be based on misperception, they would be excluded. Through experience and various other mechanisms, J. Locke's empiricism believed that certainty could be arrived at through experience, science, and intuition.

While these self-evident truths for the signers were not the same as revealed truth as found in Holy Scripture; yet they are "endowed" to all men by God the Creator. In theological language, they would be considered part of common grace, whereas for the believing Christian the Bible comes under special or revealed grace. Thus, the Bible tells us that the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, and in similar fashion all men are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Almighty God must be assumed because without Him, how could one explain that all men are so endowed?

By the way, I hope you don’t think I’m critiquing the Declaration in some kind of Aristotelian way. When I say Jefferson’s line about self-evident truths proves nothing, it’s not that I think he intended to assert a cosmic principle and failed. It’s that I think his intent was mainly rhetorical and that his aim wasn’t to write a metaphysical proof text. As rhetoric it worked fine because the people that mattered at the time all agreed that what he wrote was true. He wrote the consensus view of the founders in a legal document whose function was to announce to the King that it was splitsville and to explain why (of course it wasn’t as utilitarian as that...he knew he was writing for history too).

However, since then, the Declaration has been elevated to a level where it is regarded as the definitive statement of classical American metaphysics. And when serving in that capacity, the “We” is more than just Jefferson and the founders; it is presumably the whole nation. That’s where the notion of self-evident or axiomatic becomes a problem, because for a lot of Americans the things Jefferson expressed are neither.

Not at all, I think you got it exactly. TommyJeff wasn't writing academic material at all (although he certainly could). He was, as you pointed out, writing rhetoric.

But that doesn't take away anything from the sheer audacity of the act, and the more I learn of it the more awestruck I am. These guys were a bunch of provincials who were defying the greatest empire of the day, stating their principles openly and backing them up with their lives. There's something breathtaking in that. Smirking nonentities such as Howard Zinn insist that it was all about class interest, which is precisely wrong. Were it true, nothing like the War of Independence would ever have happened - these guys were on top, successful, educated, had it all going for them if only they had decided to play ball with the Crown. They didn't do that, and nothing the cleverest Marxian reformulations can do will change it. The phrase is too loosely used, I think, but this, in every real sense, was a paradigm shift, and nothing after it could ever be quite the same as that which came before.

Yes, the primary precepts are axiomatic, principles that one cannot not know, such as "avoid evil."

The point being, however, that those particular unalienable rights are not remotely self-evident. A look at the workings of the natural world and human history goes to show that. Indeed, the very need for the Founders to express them counter to the prevailing political conditions of the time.

The key point is that these rights, while not self-evident in themselves, become so if they are endowed by a Creator. It is "self-evident" that all men were created equal, because Christendom was in many respects built on that foundation:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:26-29)

The Founders were not stupid men; they understood the logic of their position, and they recognized the necessary role of the Creator in the sphere of human rights. It was up to the French to reveal what happens when one attempts to divorce the Creator from the "universal rights of man."

The actual "revolution", as John Adams later noted, was in the minds of the people, beginning some ten to fifteen years before the Declaration of Independence.

I would suggest that the timeframe began long before that, back to the time when the English Civil War and its aftermath left the Colonies to pretty much take care of themselves.

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