impelled and entitled

OK, and let me begin by saying that I am no scholar or historian, and that I have only the vaguest ideas of the details of international politics at the end of the eighteenth century. If any Gentle Reader really wants to know actual information, actual facts, well, there are libraries for that sort of thing. And the internet. You know. I do think there are some general things of interest about rhetoric that can be gleaned from a close examination of the Declaration of Independence, and applied not only to our understanding of the document and its surrounding history, but to our own lives and rhetorical situation.

So.

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.

The first question, when looking at a work of propaganda, should be Who is talking to whom, and what does the speaker want from the audience? In this case, it’s dreadfully murky. I think, I think, that the intended audience really is the aggregate of leaders within the colonies, the people who will ultimately pay for and fight the war. The leadership elite. I also think that there was a substantial eye toward the government of France, and the French leaders, and possibly other international leaders as well. The goal was money, bodies, and support for the cause, for open rebellion and war.

To a lesser extent, I suppose it would have been nice for the Parliament of Great Britain to read the thing and decide to mend its ways, or for the King to change policy, or abdicate, or something, but really, none of that was serious. This was intended to get money and troops from people who were already disaffected, and perhaps also to convince those who maintained loyalty to the crown to stand aside, flee to Canada, or even possibly convert to the cause.

What’s interesting is how they chose to do that. They chose to present the coming conflict as inevitable. It was not to be a war of choice, but a war of necessity. It is, therefore, not a matter for discussion or vote (anymore), and the responsibility for the vote is not held by those who signed the document. The declaration is not presented as an argument, but as a description; there is nothing to argue in it. It is fait accompli. It assumes everything, and the reader is led to assume everything, and to follow on from those assumptions.

Take the beginning—a unanimous Declaration. Was it really unanimous? Of course not, not in the sense of real consensus. It was a unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States. The States were unanimous, but the individuals differed. However, by stating (honestly) that there existed unanimity of states, the congress infers unanimity of the populace. A casual reader, in the populace, is led to believe that the contents are uncontroversial, universally agreed. Everyone knows... Surely we all agree that... Nobody wants... We all want... anytime anybody makes a claim to consensus, check to see if consensus actually exists, and I will tell you this for free: it doesn’t. Not in the specific case of whatever is under discussion, whatever that is.

Digression: I am talking about consensus of opinion, used to bolster rhetoric. Of course, in a community that values consensus of policy, there will be policies on which policy consensus is agreed, even when opinions differ. That’s something that’s hard to understand about consensus-based decision-making, is that the decisions are made by consensus, even while acknowledging (one hopes) difference of opinion. Consensus-based decision-making is fascinating, and we (meaning me, as well as the various communities in which I take part) would benefit from studying it at greater length. But it has no relevance to the topic at hand. End Digression.

Having claimed unanimity, they then begin with a distant third-person general statement about rights and obligations of decent people. What does this tell you about the rebels? That they are decent people, of course. That they are not hasty, or greedy, or ignorant. They are not brigands or pirates, nor are they dark-skinned Jewish homosexual women. They are the sort of person that would begin a war with a statement of natural law. Surely they can be trusted, yes? And when such a person says a thing is necessary, no-one would accuse the person of rushing to war, no?

And furthermore, this is not a war, no, it is a dissolving, a separation, an assumption of an earned spot at the grupps table. No, if you were reading this for the first time, there is nothing in that first bit to excite the passions, nothing to make you fear for your life and loved ones, nothing to bring up visions of cannonballs and grapeshot, of farmhouses burnt and crops spoilt, of a freezing winter in an army camp. No, they start with philosophy, an appeal to the opinions of mankind, and if you find yourself nodding with agreement, you are nodding to a matter of reason and law, and if that matter of reason and law becomes bloody later on as a natural and inevitable consequence, well, one mustn’t blame Mr. Jefferson.

OK, I’m saying it in a snarky way, which disguises my actual admiration for and agreement with the document in question. My point, in all of this, is that our admiration for and agreement with the document should not lead us to ignore its craft, as it is in part its craft that incites our admiration and agreement. In particular, however, I may say that I do think that a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that a nation declare causes for its actions, particularly when such actions, however vaguely stated, amount to war.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.