Declaration of Independence as Law

Our American Declaration of Independence is the supreme, unamendable moral law of the United States. Declarational law preceded and trumps our supreme, amendable secular law, the Constitution. As stated in our Declaration, the purpose of secular law (Constitution) is to secure our sacred, unalienable, equal, individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness -- i.e., private property honestly earned through creative labor: "That to secure these rights, Governments [constitutions] are instituted among Men...."

While our Constitution and Bill of Rights are the greatest secular laws ever written, it must be acknowledged that our secular Constitution has a sacred mandate -- the Declaration of Independence. The American Revolution is first and foremost a revolution in sacred, unalienable human rights and their associated moral laws (Declaration), and secondarily a revolution in secular law (Constitution). We must be aware that secular law, and particularly the "Living Constitution" (Orwellian Newspeak for Dead Constitution), can be perverted into tyranny when such law becomes destructive of the individual's human rights.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. - Thomas Jefferson

1) "All men are created equal" is American Declarational law. "Men," in this instance, refers to all individuals, and the word "equal" refers to natural equal rights and equal application of just law; not unnatural, forced equal social and economic outcome.

Forced equality of outcome represents social engineering empowered by the injustice of unequal rights and inequality before law. This leads to excessive collectivization of some people's labored-for property, which is sent into the communal hands of a self-serving government that "re-distributes" this property to the less industrious in return for votes. All individuals are endowed with equal unalienable rights to life, liberty, and labored-for property, and to equality before law that must secure those rights -- all men and women made equal in value and rights by the Creator and Great Equalizer.

If each individual is made in the image of God, then his/her value is infinite; all individuals are thereby equal in value before God and equal in their unalienable rights and equal before the law. All (except for the disabled) should therefore be taxed equally. If man is not made in the image of God, then some will become, as in Animal Farm, "more equal than others" -- legal superiority based on unequal rights and unequal law. If man is not made in the image of God, then by Darwinian natural selection and their animal "Will to Power," an elite class of "Philosopher Kings" will inevitably arise. Equal rights and equal law are the essence of justice; unequal rights and unequal law are the essence of tyranny.

Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights (along with the majority), which equal laws must protect[.] - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

2) "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life ..." is American Declarational law. If man is made in the image of God, then since God lives and gave life to man, all individuals have a sacred unalienable right to life and self-defense.

3) "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are ... Liberty ..." is American Declarational law. If man is made in the image of God, since God is free, then man has a sacred unalienable right to liberty -- man is born free. Human freedom can occur when all men are equal before just law, and freedom is a prerequisite to the individual's creative pursuit of happiness.

4) "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are ... the pursuit of happiness ..." is American Declarational law. If man is made in the image of God, since God is the Great Creator, man has a sacred unalienable right to his/her own creativity -- a right to private property created through individual labor -- a right to the pursuit of happiness.

In order to save the fruit of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence must be recognized and enforced as law. Amending our Constitution will also be necessary -- for example, limiting federal taxation and requiring federal spending not to exceed federal revenue. It appears that neither of these changes is likely to emanate from the federal government any time soon. However, "We the People" do not need the federal government to define our sacred human rights or their associated moral laws. According to the Declaration, those truths and laws are self-evident. "We the People" are capable of becoming masters of federal government through the amendment process.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

All American laws which are destructive to an individual's sacred, equal rights to life, liberty, and private property are un-Declarational and must be nullified -- if not by Congress or the Supreme Court, then by states and local government. The concept of "Declarational" law must find its way into the American mind and into all levels of American government.

I agree and will use my bigotry to judge history, just like Edward Gibbons plus the many deconstructionists in academia/media. I will feel all that self-righteous sensation flowing down my spine as I admire my moral superiority and evade certain truths.

Let us face the "facts", the Founders were a bunch of racist, period. Who cares if they were scared to death after Lexington and Concord coupled with the failed attempt at the Olive Branch Petition, which blocked their progress to solve the number one problem facing them at that time (According to the self-righteous, academics judging centuries later and yourself), slavery. Those racist should of hanged for going against the crown anyway and also deserved scorn while going to the gallows for not ending the practice right away, stupid bigots.

You see, those racist white men had nothing, let me say this again, nothing. The munitions were drying up, hardly any clothes, or rations for their army, nada . Being studious readers of philosophical historical giants (Hugo Grotius for example) they understood in order to appeal to other sovereign entities *cough” France *cough* “something” official needed to be produced. The DOI was quickly introduced and forwarded (Open secret) as a life line.

Since the racist founders, although several were ALREADY abolitionists, had a limited amount of time to come together, concessions were made. Now it may seem hypocritical to the jaded self-righteous bigot looking upon them two hundred + years later, but things had to move quickly. Even after the war, the hypocritical founders were again stymied by strife in the form of the AOC. No enforcement mechanism, you see, especially in the collection of war debts. A new Constitution was debated, along with the slavery issue. A large enough consensus was not reached in terms of ending slavery thus abolitionists began the crusade in America, by what? They (Benjamin Franklin etc...) ran with Jefferson's hypocritical phrase. Yes it took a while, but the DOI, established by those forward thinking white racist, served the function of its original purpose after all.

It is law. It is the first part of the organic law of the United States. To say that the Declaration is not law in America is to claim that the foundation is not the house.

Judge Adrian Burke:

As I stated in Robin v. Incorporated Vil. of Hempstead (30 N Y 2d 347, 352) chapter 127 of the Laws of 1970 is not a valid exercise of legislative power. The majority opinion states the issue as: "whether the law should accord legal [p892] personality is a policy question* which in most instances devolves on the Legislature, subject again of course to the Constitution as it has been 'legally' rendered".

This argument was not only made by Nazi lawyers and Judges at Nuremberg, but also is advanced today by the Soviets in Eastern Europe. It was and is rejected by most western world lawyers and Judges because it conflicts with natural justice and is, in essence, irrational. To equate the judicial deference to the wiseness of a Legislature in a local zoning case with the case of the destruction of a child in embryo which is conceded to be "human" and "is unquestionably alive" is an acceptance of the thesis that the "State is supreme", and that "live human beings" have no inalienable rights in this country. The most basic of these rights is the right to live, especially in the case of the "unwanted" who are defenseless. The late Chief Judge Lehman once wrote of these rights: "The Constitution is misread by those who say that these rights are created by the Constitution. The men who wrote the Constitution did not doubt that these rights existed before the nation was created and are dedicated by God's word. By the Constitution, these rights were placed beyond the power of Government to destroy." In other words, what the Chief Judge was saying was that the American concept of a natural law binding upon government and citizens alike, to which all positive law must conform, leads back through John Marshall to Edmund Burke and Henry de Bracton and even beyond the Magna Carta to Judean Law. Human beings are not merely creatures of the State, and by reason of that fact, our laws should protect the unborn from those who would take his life for purposes of comfort, convenience, property or peace of mind rather than sanction his demise. Moreover, if there is a confiscation of property through a zoning law, it is "constitutionally" invalid. Recently, the United States Supreme Court held that the taking of a life of a murderer by a State was constitutionally invalid, and in the words of one Justice, was found to be "immoral and therefore unconstitutional" (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 364-366 [Marshall, J., concuring]).

The Attorney-General argues that the legislative determination in choosing between the competing values involved herein is a value judgment committed to the legislative process of government, not to the discretion of the judiciary. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a legitimate State interest in a woman's right of privacy and in the undesirable effect of unwanted children upon society. (See Lexogram, Vol. 4, No. 10.) Upon scrutiny, these arguments are not persuasive, and the legislation cannot stand for two reasons -- it is irrational and unconstitutional.

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The more telling fact than the present legislation's irrationality is its unconstitutionality. The unconstitutionality stems from its inherent conflict with the Declaration of Independence, the basic instrument which gave birth to our democracy. The Declaration has the force of law and the constitutions of the United States and of the various States must harmonize with its tenets. The Declaration when it proclaimed "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" restated the natural law. It was intended to serve as a perpetual reminder that rulers, legislators and Judges were without power to deprive human beings of their rights.

Unless there had been a Thomas Jefferson who was educated by a philosophy professor to know the primacy of the natural law -- there would be no United States of America. For, if the Declaration had been written by a pragmatist for expedient reasons we never could have enlisted the sympathies and agreement of such a large part of the then world, including members of the British Parliament in our righteous cause. They would know the pragmatic reasoning would be nothing more than pettifoggery, and had no basis in law.

We began our legal life as a Nation and a State with the guarantee that these were inalienable rights that come not from the State but from an external source of authority superior to the State which authority regulated our inalienable liberties and with which our laws and Constitutions must now conform. That authority alone establishes the norms which test the validity of State legislation...

31 N.Y.2d 194
335 N.Y.S.2d 390
286 N.E.2d 887

Robert M. BYRN,
as Guardian ad Litem for an Infant "Roe", an Unborn Child, and All Similarly Unborn Infants, Appellant,

NEW YORK CITY HEALTH & HOSPITALS CORPORATION et al., Respondents,

Court of Appeals of New York

Argued May 30, 1972
Decided July 7, 1972

Inspirational I think. Although it would be nice if the courts used it as well as the Federalist Papers as cites since they already have used Jefferson’s letter to Danbury Baptist (a non-founding document).

They have abused Jefferson's letter, that is. They use the phrase, "wall of separation between church and state," not in the way Jefferson obviously meant it since the letter to the Danbury Baptists was genial, not adversarial, to express protection of the church from the state but only the reverse - which could not have been Jefferson's meaning in context.
Just as the Devil can quote scripture, any text can be tortured into adverse meaning - and that would include the Declaration. But in general I think the author of the article has a good point, which is amplified by the preamble to the Constitution. Specifically, it is senseless to try to interpret a document without reference to what the author(s) were trying to do.
The preamble to the Constitution contains the phrase " . . . secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . . " And that is what ties the Constitution to the Declaration - the purpose of the documents was the same. That is the "mission statement," the bumper sticker version, of the Constitution. So long as the Constitution be read with the understanding of its purpose foremost in mind, seizure of General Motors and the overthrow of the private contract via health care "reform" can be seen to be antithetical to the Constitution.

The framers were the same people (specifically George Washington and Benjamin Franklin) who promulgated the Declaration - and their perspective and purpose must be considered to be a constant.
The author of the article is trying, IMHO, to say pretty much that.

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