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

American Thinker ^ | 07/04/2010 | E. Jeffrey Ludwig

[SeekAndFind]

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.

Let us consider one of the more contentious statements of the Declaration:

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;...

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?

As we contemplate our independence as a nation and the exercise of our inalienable rights, as we sing hosannas of gratitude for these blessings, let us remember to also reject all Marxist views that would depreciate the values of the Declaration.

[Artemis Webb]

Well the answer should be obvious but perhaps our initial point of view is different.

If you believe that American Indians and women are not embraced by The Constitution (the country had to declare independence in order to have an independent constitution) then we can't agree on a debate premise. If you believe that indentured servitude and/or slavery is legal in the United States then again we cannot agree on a basic premise. If you agree that these four groups have Constitutional protections equal to white males than you must agree with me that the Declaration has embraced them. If you disagree then you need find yourself a new, and much more liberal forum.

[Billthedrill]

I'm inclined to agree. The purpose of the Declaration was not to establish a line of philosophical principles but to justify armed revolution. Had Jefferson decided to write "we hold these truths to be axiomatic" it might have been a little clearer to amateur Aristotleans but it sure would have destroyed the scansion of the thing.

The "We" in the statement does not apply to broad humanity, it applies to the men with courage enough to sign their names to it, pledging (and for many, forfeiting) lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in following it. "Self-evident" does not mean popping up in unclad beauty like Aphrodite, it means that the system described employs them as foundational premises, axioms if you want to describe the thing in terms that Jefferson did not use. It means that the conclusion, that the current government ought to be dissolved and a new one instituted, follows from the premises that (1) men have the freedom to do it, and (2) governments are formed from consent that may be withdrawn.

It's really no harder than that. The reader remains free to believe whatever he or she desires; the men who signed it did believe it. And that's why they acted as they did. And the reason Jefferson wrote it was to tell the former government why they'd been fired.

Debating the thing on the soundness of its axioms as general philosophical principles is a fine exercise in schoolboy logic but it's a little beside the point. This is, after all, rhetoric and not logic, and there is a real reason that the Greeks separated the two. Moreover, existential correctitude won't stop a bullet, or a hanging, and these men were staring at both.

But since we're indulging ourselves in this sort of amusement, I might point out that it is not the rights themselves, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that are self-evident according to a strict reading of the text. What its signators signed onto as "self-evident" was that a Creator endowed men with rights and that those were among the ones the Creator endowed. Those rights, according to this interpretation, do not hang in space on their own, they exist on the authority of God and therefore are not, in and of themselves, self-evident at all. It is the existence of God as authority in the matter that was, to these men, self-evident. (That is, in my opinion, one of the stronger arguments for God's existence if one must attempt to derive that from logic). One who does not believe that probably shouldn't sign the Declaration of Independence. And if anyone did, he's beyond chiding for it now.

[truth_seeker]

“The Declaration was not written to include the groups you mention but it embraces them none the less.”

As I understand history, negro slavery was controversial, and remained so until the Civil War and later. It was NOT the subject of the DoI.

The DoI was about freedom from a “divine” King of Great Britain and Ireland, who taxed colonists against their consent.

“All men” meant citizen and King alike, it meant native Englishman and colonist abroad alike. It meant those of high class and of low class alike.

Consistent with our DoI, we did not wind up with our own King after the revolution. And we didn't wind up with a class structure of titled noblemen.

Britain outlawed slaver in 1807 and we did somewhere in the 1860s, depending on your reading of history.

Huck is correct to a point; if the rights were “self-evident” we sure shed a lot of unnecessary blood in our Civil War to finalize those “self-evident” rights.

[Artemis Webb]

I would refer you to post 80 and my response on post 81 as to why I believe the Declaration of Independence embraces those groups.

[Repeal The 17th]

The question as it was originally posed was whether the “Declaration of Independence” truthfully states that “rights” of “all men” are “self evident”.

The discussion centered around who is the “we” in “we believe” and who are “all men” and were these rights, indeed, “self evident” and if so, then by whom.

So then you say
“...if you believe that American Indians and women are not embraced by The Constitution then we can’t agree on a debate premise...”

Well, first of all, the debate had to do with the Declaration, not the Constitution.

Secondly, if you believe the rights recognized by the Constitution and the laws of the time equally “embraced” (the word you chose to use) all “men” equally including indentured servants, American Indians, women, and slaves, then we can’t agree on a debate premise.

[OneWingedShark]

It is self-evident to those with a grounding in the Bible.
If the whole of the human race came from Adam [and Eve] then we are all, in some sense bothers-and-sisters and therefore on equal moral footing/standing: and that is [naturally] the state of being a filthy sinner. That there are slaves and lords is almost irrelevant, for as Paul observed, in Jesus Christ [the savior] the Slave is free and the Freeman is slave. (This is because the Christian slave may be mistreated and abused on Earth but he is not a Citizen of the World but of Heaven and the Great Judge will demand an account on the Day of Judgment. Furthermore, the freeman is utterly indebted to Jesus who bought him from Slavery to Sin to Himself and Righteousness.)

If Christianity is the root of the ideas found in the Declaration of Independence then the above is obvious: all men are equal because all men are in equal need of The Savior.

Furthermore, slavery (or indentured servitude) itself is NOT illegal/unconstitutional/Contra-Constitutional; the 1st Section of the 13th Amendment reads:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
(More on this line of thought: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATyjMtQJe7iWZHY2OTh0bV8yN2htZnBzOWQy&hl=en )

[Artemis Webb]

"Well, first of all, the debate had to do with the Declaration, not the Constitution."

The debate has everything to do with The Constitution. As I said before a country has to declare independence in order to have an independent constitution. There would not be a constitution to embrace all citizens if the Founding Fathers had not first declared us independent from Britain.

[9YearLurker]

And yet is there anyone like a secularist when it comes to jealously guarding ‘fairness’? I think the human sense of justice (in my mind as endowed by God) is powerful and persistent.

[OneWingedShark]

It wasn’t quite Ex Post Facto... they signed it when the outcome of the revolutionary war was utterly uncertain. {And it is true that the majority of the signers paid for that act with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.} It was, and is, the equivalent of the signatories saying “I would rather die as a man than live as a[m abused] dog.” and putting their own neck into the hangman’s noose.

[OneWingedShark]

>Why don’t you go burn a flag while you’re at it.

Burning is the accepted method of destroying a flag: I’ve done it myself... just remember to cut the union out before you light it.

[OneWingedShark]

>It is to get rid of reasoned logic so the Big Lie is again believed which will (and is) used to kill other human beings—in the womb and elderly—which will soon extend to people who do not think “properly” as now people are being put in prison for thought crimes or forced into reeducation camps.

There is a purpose for the elimination of reasoning, several actually, but I expound on one here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2513906/posts

[Brass Lamp]

Roman style slavery wasn't that different from the “wage slavery” we have today.

Oh, you're right. I remember once the United Food and Commercial Workers Union tried to strike at Safeway for a $.35 raise and government's response was to crucify thousands of grocery sackers along the I-35 corridor. In retrospect, it makes me wonder what that whiner Spartacus ever had to complain about.

I remember when I was taking Latin one of the things we translated was the diary of a slave that worked for an aqueduct designer, in his diaries he complained that his owner really needed to get a wife because many of the demeaning wife work was falling to him.

I guess the slaves mining out the Sandaracurgium mountainside don't count because they were too busy dying to write to you.

American slavery though was pretty obviously wrong.

Well, it's nice to know that, somewhere between gladiatorial combat and splitting rail, you're willing to draw a moral line in the sand.

Way too much violence...

Do you actually imagine there was more violence practiced against slaves in America? The ancient pater familias had unrestricted power of life and death over even his own children, no less his slaves. In America there were laws against harsh treatment or neglect of slaves.

Any time you have to regularly beat your workers and forbid them from gaining skills that could potentially benefit you you know you're on the wrong path.

Many people these days would be shocked to learn that corporal punishment was really quite common in the workplace of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. Factory workers were probably as frequently beaten by foremen as plantation labourers were by overseers. Sailors were CERTAINLY beaten more frequently and severely.

[Artemis Webb]

"Burning is the accepted method of destroying a flag: I’ve done it myself"

I was speaking of burning as a form of protest. But then again you knew that and you're trying to look kinda clever. It's really not working because you're just looking like an ass.

[narses]

“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.”

[narses]

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species...and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

George Washington, letter to Robert Lewis, August 18, 1799

[narses]

[Y]our late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country; but I despair of seeing it.

George Washington, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, May 10, 1786

[OneWingedShark]

*shrug* - Maybe I am an ass.
It does however bother me that “flag burner” has such a negative connotation, among those who profess to care about the flag, when the act itself [burning a flag] may actually be one of respect (that is the proper method of disposal). It’s almost like some teenager who thinks they know everything spouting off something that is TECHNICALLY correct while completely missing the underlying principles.

Like someone who says felons shouldn’t own firearms... even if they have served their sentence and the “felons” in question would be better classified as “ex-felon.”

[TASMANIANRED]

Here, here.