We continue to be plagued, two and a half months into Biden’s energetic presidency, with dangerously divided beliefs. Election stolen; election the most careful in history. Trump a great hero; Trump headed for prison if there’s any justice to be had from a Trump-skewed justice system. Vaccines a great scientific miracle salvation; vaccines a satanic plot to inject socialism into the bodies of the naïve. Biden’s ambitious agenda a long awaited getting the country back on track; Biden’s agenda the machinations of the Deep State.
It’s hard to find any beliefs we share in common. Yes, we are all Americans, but the concept “American” in this divided time seems empty.
Among the first words of the Declaration of Independence, that first attempt to define the project, the nation coming into being, are “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” The important thing here is that Jefferson evidently felt that for there to be a new country there had to be agreement on certain bedrock ideas..Not religious dogma handed down from on high, not scientific proof, but truths held to be self-evident. A sort of moral or humanistic shared commonsense.
“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.”
Jefferson’s “we” was not a “royal we” of course. It was not even, or not only, an “editorial we”–the writer speaking for the other makers of the revolution that this Declaration kicks off.
No, Jefferson is clearly presuming to speak for the “people” who are with this document breaking off from England. Not all by any means were, in 1776, passionately in favor of civil war against the king; and those self-evident truths in fact derived from English thinkers, and were probably shared with most English people.
But Jefferson seems to think it a safe bet that we all, those of us making this new country, find these basic truths self evident.
So that “liberty” which is listed as one of rights is not liberty to believe just anything. The premise of the new country is comprised of certain truths: shared concepts, values, a vision of what life should be. By implication if you reject those self-evident truths or hold others to be self-evident, the country goes off in a whole different direction.
If we are to make America whole again (MAWA), it’s worth asking at this moment of constitutional crisis: are there still self evident truths that unite us more fundamental than those that divide us?
Start with Jefferson’s original shortlist.
We’re all created equal (“all men” meant, until the feminist correction a few decades ago, “humans,” including women and non-white people when they came to be considered human). (So racist and sexist and institutions are based, self-evidently, on lies.)
And that’s “all men”, all humans, not just American humans. (So humanity trumps nationality, which should be a helpful principle in coming up with a good immigration policy. “America First” is anti-American.)
We all come equally “endowed” with certain built-in rights. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” This democratic government is what he meant. .
So democratic government is a good, an essential thing, an expression of us and not an alien intrusion on one’s personal space, as so many seem to think these days. No contradiction, conflict here between government and liberty: government is what guarantees liberty. The 1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill is not a handout but we the taxpaying people giving ourselves what we need to secure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Democratic governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, “ Jefferson continues. Nothing here about the wealth of the governed, or the amount of education. “All those governed” is what’s implied, and if not consensus, the majority. The more complete that basis of consent, the better. A corollary of which self-evident truth would seem to be that current efforts to restrict and reduce the determination of that consent are anti-American.
Are we still on board with the self-evident truths Jefferson and the other founders thought were essential to democratic government?
Are there other self-evident truths that contradict these? Are there people who will publically declare these truths to be fake news: “No, he had it wrong. We are not created equal, rule by the appropriate minority is better” ?
Jefferson was taking a chance in presuming to know what fellow colonists believed. There was also the implied conviction that if we don’t hold these truths to be self-evident, we can’t have this democracy we’re declaring.
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