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

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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