Independence Day (July 4) is our annual celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Cookouts and fireworks are great. But how should we remember the Declaration itself?
Here is a modest proposal; read it. It’s not long—less than twice the length of this column. After 244 years, it speaks in timeless voice: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
Notice from the outset that independence from Britain is not cast as a choice, but as a duty. Nor is it about individuals. It involves everyone. It became “necessary for one people,” the colonists, to act.
This concept of freedom is profoundly different from popular notions today. Although much public discourse wraps itself in the flag of “freedom,” moderns fail to notice the two mutually exclusive ideas in competition.
The framers of the Declaration recognized a principle transcending individual ideas and desires. Freedom to follow it is not a private matter but is the moral obligation of every individual.
Even governments are subject to it. Kings and nation-states do not have absolute sovereignty to legislate as they like. They, like we, are limited by an unchangeable and unchanging principle that Jefferson calls, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
This foundation of freedom is written into the very first sentence of the Declaration. If this principle is lost, freedom itself is lost.
A newer notion of freedom turns this on its head. It wars against “the laws of nature and nature’s God,” and speaks of liberty as the unbounded choice of isolated individuals.
This idea even found its way into a Supreme Court opinion. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Kennedy wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life….”
Nonsense. This is not the heart of liberty. On the contrary, atomized individuals defining laws for themselves, drive a stake through liberty’s heart. The loss of freedom comes directly from the attempt to use the power of government to create rights and freedoms that are contrary to nature.
Just governments recognize that the realities of human life and the structure of the universe are the unalterable grounding for just laws. Any citizen claiming the right to murder or steal, must be restrained by just laws. Laws that encourage evil or punish good are both unjust and destructive of the legitimate rights of people around them.
Justice and harmony require citizens to understand the true nature of human freedom and its proper bounds. Transgressing the boundaries of “Nature’s God” does not advance humanity but demonizes it.
Human freedom exists as a result of being human. Thus, freedom exists only insofar as we remain human. Any attempt to redefine human existence necessarily crushes human freedom.
What, then, are the natural boundaries of human existence? Jefferson sketches it out in the next—and most famous—passage of the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created…” Before the Declaration says, “equal,” it first says, “created.”
America is founded on this single truth. Equality is a result of being created.
In the middle of the 19th century, some replaced creation with an evolutionary randomness that made some races better than others. More recently, the power to self-identify has come to be regarded as a higher form of humanity. Both ways of denying “Nature’s God,” lead to fundamental inequality.
The founders were not so deluded. They were so sure that equality depends on our createdness that they called it “self-evident,” needing no defense or detailed proof.
Tragically, our createdness is not self-evident to everyone today. That is not a failure of theology. It is a failure of philosophy. The Declaration’s talk of “Nature’s God” is not a careless confusion of church and state. Recognition of a transcendent principle that applies to all people needs no special revelation. It is commonly known by sense and logic.
Modern claims to the contrary depend on a religious dogmatism that denies all evidence to the contrary. The framers of the Declaration were not burdened with this religion. They were free to assert that being created implies a Creator.
So, Jefferson continues, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” “Unalienable,” means inseparable. Created rights are as much a part of your humanity as is your body and soul, your sex and your personality.
Only after Jefferson has taken us to this observation does he begin to talk about the government. It is there not to create rights, but to secure what all people have by nature.
This Independence Day, let us all renew our resolve to live together by these self-evident truths.
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