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Declaration of Independence

6 min read

Part of History and the Founders.

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Every episode (3)

Who argued it

John Cribb · C. Bradley Thompson · Jerry Hurwitz

American Revolution · American History · Libertarianism

Background

Texas textbook controversy

Bob Zadek described a decision by what he called the conservative Texas textbook writing commission to excise Thomas Jefferson as a founding political philosopher, so that he would not be listed as one. Zadek listed what he said Jefferson did: wrote the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, was a scholar of the revolutionary era, was the third president, and was the first Secretary of State. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)

Zadek attributed the commission’s motive to a letter Jefferson wrote to a Baptist minister discussing the separation of church and state, in which Jefferson used a phrase that Zadek said lives in history — a wall of separation between church and state. Zadek characterized that phrase as Jefferson’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights, written in private correspondence, and said the commissioners decided Jefferson had not sufficiently embraced the church. He asked whether students should be taught history by elected officials deciding what is and is not history. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)

Immigration and the American creed

Bob Zadek argued that diversity of background, race and belief becomes irrelevant when people sign on to the American system of freedom, individual rights and personal property, and specifically to the Declaration of Independence. He said he did not fear immigration from anywhere in the world because immigrants simply want to participate in the principles in the Declaration, and asked whether he was being naive. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Yoram Hazony answered that he was, a bit, comparing the position to believing that 4,000 years of Iraqi history, civilization and religion would evaporate if one read Iraqis the Declaration of Independence or an advanced course in Lockean political philosophy. Hazony said some number of Iraqis would fit in well, but that 100,000 is not the same as a million, 10 million or 100 million, and that at some point one is picking up Iraq with everything good and evil about it and placing it inside one’s country. He said human beings do not simply change their software that way, though in small numbers he thought it fine. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Zadek replied that there is one core difference: immigrants come voluntarily, whereas going abroad imposes the system, so that one involves coercion and the other is purely voluntary. Liberalism vs. Nationalism (2018)

Benjamin Rush and the preamble

Bob Zadek introduced Benjamin Rush as a medical doctor and, he believed, the only doctor who signed the Declaration of Independence. Harlo Unger confirmed that Rush was the only MD among the signers, saying five others called themselves doctor without having studied medicine. Unger described Rush as America’s first great humanitarian, a man of modest means who believed the words of the preamble that all men were created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and who became champion of the Americans the other founders forgot: women, slaves, indentured workers, laborers, prisoners, the poor, the indigent sick and the mentally ill. Founding Healer (2019)

Unger said 90% of the population lived in that other America without money or education, barred from voting and from the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution gave women the right to vote, freed the slaves, or gave rights to indentured laborers, with only property owners able to vote in most states. He called both documents documents written by the wealthy for the wealthy, and said Rush signed the Declaration because he heard the cries of the Americans other founders forgot. Founding Healer (2019)

Zadek quoted the Declaration’s closing phrase about pledging lives, fortunes and sacred honor. Unger said Jefferson, who wrote those words, fled to Monticello and never fired a shot against the British, risking neither life nor fortune during the Revolutionary War. Zadek observed that Unger was not a fan of Jefferson and called Jefferson a complex and hypocritical figure who did not walk the walk. Founding Healer (2019)

Unger said Rush could not have been a politician because he owned no property, and that only property owners could involve themselves in politics; plantation owners ruled the South and major merchants and bankers such as John Hancock led the North. He said Rush was named to the Second Congress, which signed the Declaration of Independence, and that Rush went to Trenton, treated wounded troops on the battlefield — something Zadek said had never been done before — and turned a commandeered house into the first field hospital in American military history. Founding Healer (2019)

Lincoln and the promise

John Cribb said the Founders have come under criticism for talking a good game while setting up a country that institutionalized racism and slavery, and that Lincoln argued the Founders knew slavery was wrong, including slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson, who in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence wrote that slavery is a cruel war against human nature itself. Cribb said Lincoln explained the Founders could not fight Britain, set up a new country, hold 13 different states together and get rid of slavery all at once, and that Lincoln compared slavery to a cancer in the body politic that would make the patient bleed to death if cut out at once. America’s Second Founding (2021)

Cribb said Lincoln held that the Founders laid down principles in the Declaration that spelled the doom of slavery on purpose — that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and that this was the first time a nation was created out of the idea that people should be free and govern themselves. He said those principles were a promise to future generations, that the Civil War became a fight to redeem that promise for millions of enslaved Americans, and that the Gettysburg Address called for a new birth of freedom as a rededication to the ideals in the Declaration. America’s Second Founding (2021)

Across episodes

The Declaration is invoked in all four episodes, but the episodes show no development: Zadek uses it in 2010 and 2018 as a creed to be taught and signed on to, Unger in 2019 measures the signers against its preamble, and Cribb in 2021 reads it through Lincoln as a promise redeemed by the Civil War.

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