Posted on 07/04/2016 10:27:49 PM PDT by Nachum
Has America spent the last few hundred years misunderstanding the Declaration of Independence? That's what Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, believes.
According to Allen, the paragraph beginning 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' has been misinterpreted thanks to a rogue period that was not in the original document.
And that could completely transform our understanding of how the Founding Fathers viewed the role of government, The New York Times reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
More revisionist nonsense by left wing haters of freedom.
Cant negate out all the writings of the founders whose intentions on their documents are given clear context.
This is also a pretext attack on the 2nd amendment as well.
They have to sell books, so they create a controversy.
He should just claim he found an extra paragraph written in invisible ink that extols the rights of trannies to use whatever bathroom they want, and it would be more credible than this nonsense about a period or the lack thereof meaning a damn thing, let alone a justification of big government or a sign that Jefferson was actually a statist.
The word “That” after happines is capitalized which indicates the beginning of a new sentence
In the eloquent words of Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe:
Nuts.
THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ..... IS THE DEMOCRATS.
All the rest of us can understand it just fine.
I especially love the part which says we can throw the bums out and form a new govt. I know that one really riles the DemocRATS.
Not so in the English of those days. Caps were often used mid-sentence for emphasis........then........
And the “,” between militia and “the right of the people” is also generally thought to be a mistake.
Pretty sure the those rubes didn’t vet every “jot and tittle” either.
Effin moron...
Read The Federalist Papers....
It is nonsense. They actually want us to believe that the framers meant for rights that they recognize that Americans had to life, liberty, and even a right to try and be happy, were equivalent to what, an inalienable right to “government”, to be governed? Statist nonsense.
The signers of the declaration were so wary of government that they demanded a bill of ten individual rights be appended to the Constitution that followed, after Articles of Confederation.
Then, sixty years later the country suffered a grievous civil war when half the states finally told the government—that the professor claims was meant by the framers to be an inalienable right? Because the writer did not press down firmly enough with his quill to make a period instead of a comma?—to GTH.
They can quibble over this kind of statist nonsense: that the framers meant for us to value the necessary evil government as much as out lives and liberty and happiness, while ignoring the plain meaning of the 2nd amendment.
So I suppose we have some idea of how many felt in the country ‘round about 1859.
The breakdown below illustrates the list of self-evident truths. Each begins with the word "that". Such a thing is called a "noun phrase". A noun phrase sitting by itself has no meaning.
For example, the sentence, "That I can breathe is a very good thing" has meaning. The phrase "that I can breathe" is a reference to a thing without a complete thought about that thing.
===========================================================
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.
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.
===========================================================
The author's opinion that listing things make them all equally important is nonsense and probably won't serve the purpose he seeks since the last item listed is the right of the people to abolish government.
Since the sentence above contains multiple noun phrases, and since some of the phrases contain commas, the individual noun phrases should probably be separated by semi-colons or, as seen on hand-written versions of The Declaration, dashes. Regardless of the punctuation the meaning is clear.
To pull this interpretation out, she had to reach up the sigmoid, descending, transverse, and ascending colon to find it.
Not only did the founders actually mean to say that only the government is truly free, but this missing comma is proof of global warming. The government must do something about it! /s
Sure, call me sexist, say I’m shallow, but I just can’t get all serious and studious about a theory advanced by a professor named “Danielle.”
USA needs a new Declaration of Independence...from the Commie/IslamoNazi Democraps! Those that have taken over the D party, I mean (I like the many, many regular level-headed D voters who do NOT support Obama/Hillary/Pelosi/Krapistan)
So this poof is so smart that he knows the Declaration better than Jefferson?
Yes it is b.s. revisionism. What is truly hilarious is how suddenly these leftist academics want to wrap themselves in original historical documents (DofI, Constitution) if they think they can make case for more govt. But whenever the original document fails to provide needed propaganda material, well then of course it is tossed aside as an irrelevant anachronism. Twits like this “professor” are so transparent in their dishonest ransacking of the historical record, taking only what they think is useful and tossing away everything that does not further their propaganda.
I got as far as ‘the New York Times reported...’
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