They point out the partisanship of the crown’s judges who neither care for the laws or the common good. In their grievances, Jefferson and his fellow writers take issue with England repeatedly overruling their state governments, often dissolving them and preventing elections to fill vacancies. Indeed, if it were the former ideal, then England’s paternalistic approach to ruling the colonies would be welcome. It becomes apparent that Jefferson and the founders weren’t imagining a welfare state devoted to safety, tolerance, and compliance instead, they wanted to outline a system that maximized self-government and subsidiarity. This is to say nothing of the most problematic of these self-evident truths, “the pursuit of happiness.” Is that an injunction to tolerate all lifestyles? Is it an admission that a happy life of virtue is what life and liberty are for, not dissipation and misery? Is it a guarantee that the government will meet all the material and social requirements of a happy life, even to the point of creating a government department devoted to such a purpose ?įor this reason, it’s important to understand the truths of the Declaration’s second paragraph in the context of what follows, which is a list of grievances against England. Does the government liberate its people from all forms of oppression, real or imagined, or does it only liberate them from government oppression? What if one citizen’s liberty infringes on another’s? And how would one negotiate a conflict between one’s personal safety and another’s personal liberty? Is the government on the hook for protecting its citizens from all potential mortal threats-like guns, Covid, and bad drivers? Or does it just protect them from foreign armies and domestic criminals? And do all people have an unalienable right to life, or just the people who can take care of themselves and be productive? They are “self-evident” because they transcend proofs outside themselves they are the rational products of experience and common sense.Īnd what are these self-evident truths? “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.”ĭepending on how the reader defines these terms, this is either a very high bar to set for government or a very low one. This is what is meant in the famous line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” They are “truths” about the conditions for humanity, not laws enforced by a government, or customs enforced by traditions, or commandments issued by God. It is a concise and beautiful expression of natural law, which is based in human nature and arrived at by human reason-and which has a long tradition in the Catholic Church. Rather, the Declaration establishes the founding principles of a new kind of government for a new kind of nation. And it does not include a Bill of Rights that guarantees certain freedoms to all Americans in all states. It does not establish a federalist system in which state governments operate independently but are nonetheless united under a national government. It does not officially institute the American representative democracy with its three branches of government and various checks and balances. To begin with, the Declaration is not a constitution that defines the role of government and articulates its laws. Indeed, in many ways the Declaration is as revolutionary today as it was when it was originally written. However, when one encounters the Declaration of Independence as an educated adult - say, as an English teacher explicating the text for high school juniors - the wide gulf between what is popularly assumed and what the text actually says becomes apparent.

Consequently, in the minds of most Americans, this founding document of the United States is just another overrated, unreadable text written by a racist dead white man.

This is not surprising when one considers that most people only read it as teenagers at school, when they lack the maturity or even basic literacy to make sense of it. Few documents are more misunderstood than the Declaration of Independence.

When tyranny becomes law