Declaration of Independence

I handed out some free copies of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution this week to 4th grade and up. To teachers, I stressed the importance of the Declaration as something we need to hold onto and cherish. With reflection and further study, I now lean towards characterizing the Declaration of Independence as at once the most precious and most dangerous of documents in our American heritage.

No doubt that the Declaration has suffered seriously from attacks of all kinds from many sources over the years. The whole idea of ‘natural rights’ and the relevance or existence of a creator have either been seriously questioned or totally debunked. While I am uncomfortable with defining just what are the “laws of nature,” certainly our society is treading on thin ice in trying to posit any secure grounds for the dignity and freedom of man other than our Western tradition of European Christianity. Evolution tells us we are a freak accident of nature and a predatory menace threatening the whole world’s ecosystem. That is hardly a comforting starting point in arguing for the inalienable rights of men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of nature’s laws is the principal of survival of the fittest. That is a totally abhorrent basis for founding a social system that protects the weak and insures their survival. It is only our Christian tradition that tells us that man is the crown jewel of creation, made in the very image of God, and standing apart from all the rest of creation.

The basis of our Constitutional law is the Declaration of Independence. The hinge pin of the Declaration is that our dignity and rights come from our Creator who sits above governments and kings. Government then must be subservient to greater truths and not the source of truth. Our Protestant tradition of the priesthood of the believer is the pure gold standard in enunciating the value and dignity of each human individual as they stand equal before God. To try to build a base for either liberty or equality apart from this is an exercise of the most arduous and difficult kind. We, as Christians, stand firmly in the tradition of these bridge builders to the American concepts of liberty and equality. No other philosophy or methodology has been to this point able to bear that weight.

Yet these unquestioned values of liberty and equality are also very dangerous concepts that, if allowed to run unchecked, will feed upon themselves until they descend into total chaos and destruction. These high flown words served well in inspiring a revolution but were ill defined and vague at best. Jefferson, himself, was a slave owner and could not see the implications of his own writing. Our idea of liberty finally evolved to the point of ridding us of slavery, but it continues to morph into further and further notions of radical individualism free of all social, moral, and religious constraints. Unchecked, liberty seeks to knock down all the walls of restraint upon personal freedom until society’s ceiling finally crashes down around it in swirling winds of chaos. Egalitarianism, likewise, is an animal that will grow and grow if left unchecked until it eats us out of house and home. Economic disparity is now characterized as inherently unfair and unjust pushing us towards socialism. Hierarchies are ridiculed. Age is grounds for suspicion. Representation must be engineered to insure ‘fairness.’ The only power capable of insuring this is that of government which must become more and more intrusive at the behest of elites who understand correctly the goals of a “just” society.

The Declaration of Independence: a dangerous and precious document. Handle with care.