A few months ago, Your Humble Blogger repeated the intention to examine The Declaration of Independence, and there was some interest from Gentle Readers, so perhaps we should look at it together over the next couple of weeks. Before we do, though, I should probably present the text without (much) comment:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
- He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
- For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
- For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
- He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
- He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
- He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
- He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
That’s pretty much it. I’ll want to talk about the first paragraph in detail, as that’s the part that people tend to remember, but I think there are some interesting things in the way the rest of it is presented. You can tell a lot about the context, too, by what they think is important and what can be ignored. It’s a strange document, in a lot of ways, actually. So what do y’all think? Do you have any particular questions?
Remember, class, that when we examine a piece of rhetoric, what we’re looking at is who is talking to who (or to whom, if the person is sufficiently pretentious), and what they want from each other. There are usually multiple audiences intended, and multiple effects in mind, and in addition there is also emulation, self-pretention, if you will, the sense of doing what is done. We are at a very different moment in history, in power and politics, so to look at the thing will require a certain amount of imagination. And, of course, I’ll just riff off phrases that I like. You know, like I do. But if there’s an aspect that has bothered you about this foundation document, or a question about how a certain general idea of propaganda is reflected, or what patterns we can take from this document, throw ’em on into the comments, and I’ll do my best.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
One question I have: the Declaration is one of the various documents that we have referred to throughout our history to help answer some of the broad questions — why do we have a government? How should it work? What are my obligations to it, and its obligations to me?
Did the authors intend it that way at all? Were future generations one of the target audiences? And, if so, to what extent did they cram some of this stuff down our throats — as a nation, did we really hold those truths to be self-evident?
Do we now?
and what’s the difference between this document and “i do’wanna! no no no no no!”
Well, one diff btwn this doc and “no no no etc” is that the Declaration of Independence is the foundation of the American philosophy of freedom and “no no no etc” gets your highchair pushed into the corner.
However, that said, the 2-year-old’s “nonono” in many ways lays the groundwork for the teen’s rebellion, just as Ye Olde Declaration laid the groundwork for a couple of wars (notably the Revolutionary and that of 1812…).
So maybe the answer to your question, david, is “eloquence and ratification.” At root, “nonono” is the child’s first declaration of independence, and the only thing that keeps it from historical significance is its ubiquity.
Or was Thomas Jefferson’s first “nonono” somehow more significant than mine? Certainly in retrospect, his was weighty with portent…
One answer would be the twenty-six specifics, another would be the manner in which the author places it in a historical, philosophical and political context, and a third would be that it is actually persuasive.
Er, is there any way in which the document is similar to “i do’wanna! no no no no no!”? I mean, other than the way any disagreement would be?
Thanks,
-V.
i’m trying not to get distracted by what i’d like it to mean, and what people would like to believe it says about the future, and looking instead at it in a very reductive way. (not that others aren’t.) people of the time obviously weren’t fully convinced that monarchy is a bad idea or that people are equal in ways other than wanting sex and having localized fur and liking pizza and such. it’s still an issue, based on this presidency, property holdings as meritocracy, and the ongoing occupations here with the assassination of “camelot,” disney royalty stories, and “the queen” – whose queen would that be? norway? thailand?
although i think it should be taken seriously, as a question of our belief in our system, when people are surprised and flattered that powerful folks eat “ordinary” food. feudalism is never far from us. we used that system for a long time.
so to me the question that stands is how much of these documents is a gloss over a loose coalition of lords, to satisfy each other that nobody wanted to be king. and to that end, the persuasions and freedoms delineated in the document contrast strongly with the results of the system – the creation of enormous concentrations of power, the apparently permanent disenfranchisement of those whose liberty was not on the table at the start, the inability to treat those outside the country with the same respect.
or read differently, this is a broad description of the change from feudalism to modern capitalism. financial liberty only.
Well, the document doesn’t actually argue that monarchy is a bad idea, just that a bad monarch deserves to be dethroned. Actually, it barely argues that at all; it assumes it, and then argues that the king in question is a bad one. I do agree with your point about our attraction to kingliness or queenliness (or princessitude, certainly) is essentially feudal, and is in some sense deeper than, and opposed to, the ideas behind this Declaration. Despite not really arguing the monarchy point, Mr. Jefferson and his buddies make it clear that the principles they don’t argue and which form the basis for the experiment include being agin monarchy.
Where I have trouble with your take is that I don’t see the creation of enormous concentrations of power, the apparently permanent disenfranchisement of those whose liberty was not on the table at the start, the inability to treat those outside the country with the same respect as in any way results of the Declaration. I would argue (and I know very little eighteenth-century history) that all of those problems were worse in the (Western) generation previous to the declaration than they were in the generation after, and that even in what we can now call the long run, more or less, that power is somewhat less concentrated now than in 1775, that fewer groups of people are disenfranchised than were in 1775, and that xenophobia is both less widespread and less vicious than in 1775. Not that we have achieved anything like a wide distribution of power, or full franchise, or kinship beyond the nation-state boundaries, but that things haven’t gotten worse on those scores, but better.
Not, as you point out, that the transmission of power from hereditary land-owners and title-holders to patent-owners and stockholders is necessarily a fundamentally change in our system, or a complete rejection of feudalism. Nor do I think that we are on some unstoppable march to equality, that the system necessarily forces power down and out to the margins. We go through changes, and then more changes, and each is different. But if I had to choose between a loose coalition of lords and a loose coalition of businessmen and farmers, well, I’m with Hamilton and Jefferson.
Thanks,
-V.
i just don’t know how to judge progress. it’s not one thing. it’s not one direction. it’s not really anything. people are very quick to accept credit on behalf of their favorite vehicle of change, forgetting to mention that the vehicle was powered by and impossible without a source developed by people who were uninterested in transport.
wouldn’t it be fair to say that we believe what we believe now about human freedom, if there is a measurable baseline change from 1000 years ago, because of the development of the telescope? because of changes in cosmology. drastic reconsideration of the universe and religion with it. or was there something driving that, looking for something beyond the questionable divinity of a third cousin now in charge of this, this, and this territory.
i agree that there are better and worse people to have in the great houses. where i’m stumbling now is that i can’t figure out which end is the head. there were so many discoveries, solving so many longstanding issues. i keep seeing people offering success in war as a measure of a country’s ability to rightly apply technology, which is a measure of its intellectual flexibility, and flexibility is a hallmark of both democracy and capitalism.
i’ve also read lately people describing capitalism as a democratizing force. i hear this and interpret it to be a conceptual leap from serving one master to serving many, some of whom are in many ways below you, except for in this particular exchange. in that way power is distributed more freely. but social benefit, the changes in society, the gains in society in education, health, in measures of welfare, where was i saw recently someone talking about the printing press again as the great equalizer. right; al gore. talking about closed versus open media.
i think i mentioned i’ve been reading about anarchy. i’ve meant to do this for ages, to cut through all the junk i knew and didn’t about it and figure out something for myself. it’s just such an excellent counterweight. for instance, would the people in southern louisiana and mississippi be unable to repair their communities without the help of large institutions? certainly if they’d never contributed (“spent” or “taxed”) to those institutions, lots of things would have been different.
on a newscast i heard about the police in new orleans doing necessary work to keep the peace in the city after the floods. necessary hierarchical work, “protecting” property, being done because the non-hierarchical work of assembling a community escape plan was not done. seriously, newscasters were talking about people doing damage to storefronts that were in all likelihood going to be torn down because of the water damage. but this is this, and that is that. why bother with the mighty hand of the universe when you can bitch about somebody’s inferior moral courage and then eat a hamburger in a dry hotel room, to be expensed when you “finally” get to go home in a couple days.
after reading another tale of deaths and bereavement from guatemala i saw an ad for “survivor: guatemala” – fortunately no one is likely to get voted out for failing to dig out a relative in a top five time – just after listening to a sports announcer talk about a baseball manager’s “style of attack” in some proximity to a discussion which declared in seriousness that setting off suicide bombs on a daily basis was something best addressed in a footnote, not in the official version of history.
alexander hamilton didn’t create global warming. i was warned (as was everyone in the class) not to pin too much on technological explanations. but i have a modern geek’s sense of the breadth of technology. slang is tech. every method is a development.
i think that’s all i can say for now. let me read through the material again and maybe more will show up…