Posted on 07/04/2010 7:03:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Why do liberals and their mindless ilk never mention the black Africans who made a fortune selling their brothers?
The self-evident truths line is rhetorical and proves nothing. It is a statement of the premises upon which the rest of the document rests, but they certainly can be disagreed with. At the time, the Enlightenment was in full swing and so a line like that could probably stand on its own, but in the last 200 years the notion of natural law and a rational basis for everything has taken a real beating.
That’s really the root of our problems, why we’re drifting away from the Constitution and our founding ideas: a lot of people are skeptical of them. Many people would agree with the UN Declaration on Human Rights as a better basis for establishing rights than the Declaration of Independence. It’s the whole positive versus negative rights thing. The former rejects natural law and the notion of self-evident unalienable rights established in nature or a Creator (i.e. outside of human will). FDR sealed the deal in 1944 with his New Bill of Rights which was a flat out rejection of the Declaration’s understanding of rights.
But that’s the nature of things. Words on a page and the ideas they express can’t last forever. There’s a kind of entropy that changes things, and ideas are delicate things. In order to maintain them, you almost have to build a cult around them, as the religions do. You have to develop ritual and dogma and have a committed priestly caste to maintain them and make sure they are passed on to the next generation intact. We have been too casual about maintaining our founding ideas for this to happen. However, given the natural flux of human understanding, I actually think our ideas have persisted remarkably well. What they have going for them in my opinion is that they are true, and therefore they tend to work, but even that’s not really enough.
It was, and is, that secondary hypothesis concerning the status of the once-enslaved as "men" that was in error, not the self-evidentness of the rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.
Correct, and well-said.
The principals of our founding documents and the constitution are designed to prevent enslavement of one class of men over another. The flaw wasn't the document, it was the definition of "men". That has since been corrected. Those principals are largely being ignored by government these days, unfortunately. Witness the selective taxation of some individuals for the benefit of others - de facto enslavement in essence. The present use of government power to steal from the productive is in direct opposition to the tenets of the constitution of this country.
Yes, the primary precepts are axiomatic, principles that one cannot not know, such as "avoid evil."
The secondary Natural Law precepts build on the primary, by man's right reason, such as the pursuit of happiness.
Regarding the natural world, the laws of motion and calculus discovered by Sir Isaac Newton were regarded as Natural Laws, a reflection of Eternal Law, discovered by man. This concept went well into the 19th century when what we call physics professors today described themselves as Natural Philosophers.
The option to leave exists, with all its benefits and consequences. Only you can decide on the costs and benefits of moving to another country.
BTW, "This government" is not that of a constitutional republic, and hasn't been for a good while. A good while longer than I've been here.
So what exactly is your point? To remind us that Washington owned slaves? NS, Sherlock. WE KNOW. Because of the culture’s obsession with this detail, the average young person today is far more likely to know that GW owned slaves than to know what Saratoga or Valley Forge or the Farewell Address were.
Are you a social studies teacher? Your worldview seems to be a product of one of our stellar education departments.
I actually think our ideas have persisted remarkably well. What they have going for them in my opinion is that they are true,
I see they are Self-Evident to you. (and to me)
It seems to me that it is human nature to seek the truth, unless you are taught that there is no truth. But then how could that be true?
With all due respect, the revolution's success came from the clan of your user name, the French, who despised the British Crown.
The work of Benjamin Franklin as well as the rest of the Committee of Correspondence in appeasing France were the keys to victory, not ideology. The French gradually funneled aid throughout the campaign and when the rebellious colonist started making strong gains against Britain, France went "full bore" knowing victory could be achieved against their hated rival.
The DOI was a strong statement of the rebellious colonists for the purposes of declaring their sovereignty, which France, the Netherlands and several other countries eventually recognized/aided. Spain helped indirectly as well, by pressuring Britain with a Franco/Spanish alliance. At home, many colonists of British North America were either opposed to the revolutionaries or just neutral/(The bane of society) moderates.
After the revolution and ratification of the new Constitution, the Federalist sought to censor the “limited government types”, who eventually morphed into the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist/Pro-centralized power, became the very same people who they fought against, tyrants. Is tyranny and censorship self evident? There is a strong reason why the Federalist Party dissolved, the collapse was extremely self-evident.
I believe in those truths, but I don’t think they’re self evident. Some people think it’s self-evident that everyone has a right to a house or a job or whatever, which is just wrong. So the notion of self evidence is good in a rhetorical way, and it works when everyone agrees that the thing that’s claimed to be self evident is self evident, but it really kind of holds itself up by its own bootstraps and so isn’t exactly an immovable anchor.
True it’s human nature to seek the truth, but it’s also human nature be wrong about stuff. If the truth is to prevail and persist, it takes more than just letting people seek the truth. The truth has to be expounded and defended against untruth and it has to be pitched and sold and ingrained into people. Otherwise they’ll just wind up believing silly things. The fact that Barak Obama is president proves this.
Calvin Coolidge got it right in a great speech that he gave on the Fourth back in 1926:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2546810/posts
“””No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.”””
He says that if “we are to MAINTAIN the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.....We must CULTIVATE the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. WE must KEEP REPLENISHED...”
Our principles are great and true, but we can’t rely on the notion that they’re self evident to maintain them. Instead we have to do the hard work of maintaining/cultivating/replenishing them. This is hard work, and especially hard for a pluralistic nation with a million things going on, but it has to be done by every generation. We can’t be casual about it or rest on our laurels or we’ll lose them.
Part of the problem with slavery in particular is that it’s taken vastly different forms in different times and places. Roman style slavery wasn’t that different from the “wage slavery” we have today. 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.
American slavery though was pretty obviously wrong. Way too much violence, way too much reliance on racial prejudice and pseudo justification. 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.
You have given me a migraine with your rubbish. Might you now move the conversation into one of reparations? It seems like the logical progression of your apparent thought process on all of this.
As for me, I will go back to exercising my Liberty and Freedom in celebrating OUR independence and remembering those that bothered to form it, fight and die for it and even today—protect it.
YOU, of course, are FREE to insult the memory of our brave Founders. While I find it disgusting, that is certainly your right.
Had these brave men, including President Washington, not bothered to get together to begin what would become our Free Country, there might have been a slave or two out mowing my lawns right now, instead of my wife. hmmm
I LOVE Rodeo’s.... I would pay extra to see that. ;>)
Your post is one of the best I’ve ever read here at FreeRepublic, and that’s really saying something.
Your last paragraph is beautiful. Thank you.
Because that would not fit with their “woe is me” narrative.
The issue I see, is that many are simply not asking the right questions. When they start asking the right questions, they become liberated within their mind at first, and then in their actions and life pursuits.
It is no ones business to know or control what I am thinking.
I am FREE.
This IS self-evident and we are all born with it.
“...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”
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“WE” meant the signatories of the document.
“ALL MEN” did not include American Indians, indentured servants, women, or slaves.
That's nice. But other people don't, which is the problem. And having a capacity for rational thought isn't enough. Nor is waiting around for people to ask the right questions and hoping they arrive at the right answers. You have to make the case for the truth, to argue for it, to expound on it and praise it, to persuade people so they can see it. This is not a passive thing. And by the way, doing so doesn't amount to "controlling what you're thinking". There is a difference between controlling and persuading.
The Declaration was not written to include the groups you mention but it embraces them none the less.
“...but it embraces them none the less...”
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Really?
How so?
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