Now just WHERE did ol' Abe get a crazy idea like THIS???
Oh... wait...
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.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
(Do I Really need to provide a reference?)
It wouldn't do any good. I reference and quote the Declaration of Independence constantly, but they just ignore the principle on which our own government's legitimacy rests.
They don't want to hear about the Declaration of Independence. The best they can present in the form of an argument is "Well it was different when the founders did it."
It is a Hollow argument that does not even address the main point.